"Oh, mother, read it," and she laid the letter in her mother's lap. Did she want to go? She had been so undecided before. Bernard Carrick had received a letter also. Mr. Bartram was to start in a short time, as it seemed necessary that some one should look after Daffodil's estate and he wished to make her father co-trustee if at any time he should be disabled, or pass out of life. He could depend upon the uprightness and good judgment of Mr. Bartram in every respect. And he put in a very earnest plea for the loan of his daughter awhile in the winter. "Oh, I should let her go by all means," declared Mrs. Forbes. "You see that unlucky marriage service has put her rather out of gear with gayeties and when she comes back she will be something fresh and they will all be eager to have her and hear about the President and Lady Washington. And it will cheer her up immensely. She must not grow old too fast." Daffodil went to tea at Mrs. Ramsen's and there was to be a card party with some of the young men from the Fort. Mrs. Forbes and the captain were at tea and the Major's wife. They talked over the great rush of everything, the treasures that were turning up from the earth, the boats going to and fro. Booms had not come in as a word applicable to this ferment, but certainly Pittsburg had a boom and her people would have been struck dumb if the vision of fifty or a hundred years had been unrolled. Lieutenant Langdale came in to the card playing. They really were very merry, and he thought Daffodil was not so much changed after all, nor heartbroken. He was very glad. And then he asked and was granted permission to see her home. He wanted to say something sympathetic and friendly without seeming officious, yet he did not know how to begin. They talked of his mother, of Archie and how well he was doing. "And at times I wish I had not enlisted," he remarked in a rather dissatisfied tone. "Not that the feeling of heroism has died out--it is a grand thing to know you stand ready at any call for your country's defence, but now we are dropping into humdrum ways except for the Indian skirmishes. And it gets monotonous. Then there's no chance of making money. I didn't think much of that, it seemed to me rather ignoble, but now when I see some of those stupid fellows turning their money over and over,--and there's that Joe Sanders; do you remember the wedding feast and his going off to Cincinnati with his new wife, who was a very ordinary girl?" and Ned gave an almost bitter laugh. "Now he owns his boat and is captain of it and trades all the way to New Orleans." "Oh, yes." She gave a soft little laugh as the vision rose before her. "I remember how sweet you looked that night. And I had to be dancing attendance on her sister. How many changes there have been." "Yes; I suppose that is life. The older people say so. Otherwise existence would be monotonous as you said. But you did admire military life."