plain, and there she sits on my back with her bugle at her mouth
and sounds the orders and puts them through the evolutions for an
hour or more; and it is too beautiful for anything to see those
ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and waltz about,
and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always
graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near
by, sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you
know, and sometimes she can't hold herself any longer, but sounds
the 'charge,' and turns me loose! and you can take my word for it,
if the battalion hasn't too much of a start we catch up and go over
the breastworks with the front line.

"Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not
ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes. It's because
of her drill. She's got a fort, now--Fort Fanny Marsh. Major-
General Tommy Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons
built it. Tommy is the Colonel's son, and is fifteen and the
oldest in the Battalion; Fanny Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is
next oldest--over thirteen. She is daughter of Captain Marsh,
Company B, Seventh Cavalry. Lieutenant-General Alison is the
youngest by considerable; I think she is about nine and a half or
three-quarters. Her military rig, as Lieutenant-General, isn't for
business, it's for dress parade, because the ladies made it. They
say they got it out of the Middle Ages--out of a book--and it is
all red and blue and white silks and satins and velvets; tights,
trunks, sword, doublet with slashed sleeves, short cape, cap with
just one feather in it; I've heard them name these things; they got
them out of the book; she's dressed like a page, of old times, they
say. It's the daintiest outfit that ever was--you will say so,
when you see it. She's lovely in it--oh, just a dream! In some