II


INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW

The colonel's papers failed to hold him somehow. He rose and paced the
room with his short, stiff-kneed tread. He stopped and stared into the
fire; his face began to get red.

"So! Moya's clothes are not good enough. Going to set the people to work,
is she? Wants an outfit worthy of her son. And who's to pay for it, by
gad? Post-nuptial bills for wedding finery are going to hurt poor little
Moya like the deuce. Confound the woman! Dressing my daughter for me,
right in my own house. Takes it in her hands as if it were her right, by
----!" The colonel let slip another expletive. "Well," he sighed, half
amused at his own violence, "I'll write to Annie. I promised Moya, and
it's high time I did."

Annie was the colonel's sister, the wife of an infantry captain, stationed
at Fort Sherman. She was a very understanding woman; at least she
understood her brother. But she was not solely dependent upon his laggard
letters for information concerning his private affairs. The approaching
wedding at Bisuka Barracks was the topic of most of the military families
in the Department of the Columbia. Moya herself had written some time
before, in the self-conscious manner of the newly engaged. Her aunt knew
of course that Moya and Christine Bogardus had been room-mates at Miss
Howard's, that the girls had fallen in love with each other first, and
with visits at holidays and vacations, when the army girl could not go to
her father, it was easily seen how the rest had followed. And well for