"There's a sort of connection," said Mrs. Bogardus carelessly. "Some of
our Heads have come from the class that you call the Hands and Feet,
haven't they?"

The colonel admitted the fact, but the fact was the exception. "Why,
that's just the matter with us now! We've got no class of legislators. I
don't wish to plume myself, but, upon my word, the two services are about
all we have left to show what selection and training can do. And we're
only just getting the army into shape, after the raw material that was
dumped into it by the civil war."

"Weren't you in the civil war yourself?"

"I was--a West Pointer, madam; and I was true to my salt and false to my
blood. But, the flag over all!--at the cost of everything I held dear on
earth." After this speech the colonel looked hotter than ever and a trifle
ashamed of himself.

Mrs. Bogardus's face wore its most unobservant expression. "I don't agree
with Paul," she said. "I wish in some ways he were more like other young
men--exercise, for instance. It's a pity for young men not to love
activity and leadership. Besides, it's the fashion. A young man might as
well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Blood is a strange thing,"
she mused.

The colonel looked at her curiously. In a woman so unfrank, her occasional
bursts of frankness were surprising and, as he thought, not altogether
complimentary. It was as if she felt herself so far removed from his
conception of her that she might say anything she pleased, sure of his
miscomprehension.