The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance, narrowing her eyelids. "Mother, there was something else in Gladys's letter. Billy Castant has enlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, while we were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he--he didn't go home; he just enlisted." "The foolish fellow!" Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition told her there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon the presumptive cause. "The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But he won't work for it. It's easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider." "I don't think it was easy at Las Guasimas," Elsie said, with a strained little laugh. "You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle your volunteers?" Mrs. Valentin listened with a catch in her breath. What did this portend? So slight a sign as that in Elsie meant tears and confessions from another girl. "And did you hear of this only just now, from Gladys's letter?" "Yes, mother." "You extraordinary child--your father all over again! I might have known by the way you laughed over that letter that you had bad news to tell--or keep to yourself." "I don't call that bad news, do you, mother? He does need an education, but he will never get it out of books." "Well, it's a pretty severe sort of education for his parents--nineteen, an only son, and to go without seeing them again. He might at least have come home and enlisted from his own State." They were at the far end of the platform, facing the dark of the pine-clad ravines. Deep, odorous breaths of night wind came sighing up the slopes. "Mother, there was something happened last winter that I never told you," Elsie began again, with pauses. "It was so silly, and there seemed no need to speak of it. But I can't bear not to speak now. I don't know if it has made any difference--with Billy's plans. It seems disloyal to tell you. But you must forget it: he's forgotten, I am sure. He said--those silly things, you know! I couldn't have told you then; it was too silly. And I said that I didn't think it was for him or for me to talk about such things. It was for men and women, not boys who couldn't even get their lessons." "Elsie!" Mrs. Valentin gave a little choked laugh. "Did you say that? The poor boy! Why, I thought you were such good friends!" "He wasn't talking friendship, mother, and I was furious with him for flunking his exams. He passed in only five out of seven. He ought to have done better than that. He's not stupid; it's that fatal popularity. He's captain of this and manager of that, and they give him such a lot of money. And they pet him, too; they make excuses for him all the time. I told him he must _do_ something before he began to have feelings. The only feeling he had any right to have was shame for his miserable record." "And that was all the encouragement you gave him?" "If you call that 'encouragement,'" said Elsie.