"Is your sister-in-law well. God bless her!" shouted the Captain. "Uncle, you _mustn't_ shout," remonstrated Camilla gently. "I'm only exercising my voice,"--and to Ailsa: "I neglect nothing, mental, physical, spiritual, that may be of the slightest advantage to my country in the hour when every respiration, every pulse beat, every waking thought shall belong to the Government which I again shall have the honour of serving." He bowed stiffly from the waist, to Ailsa, to his niece, turned right about, and marched off into the house, his white moustache bristling, his hair on end. "Oh, dear," sighed Camilla patiently, "isn't it disheartening?" "He is a dear," said Ailsa. "I adore him." "Yes--if he'd only sleep at night. I am very selfish I suppose to complain; he is so happy and so interested these days--only--I am wondering--if there ever _should_ be a war--would it break his poor old heart if he couldn't go? They'll never let him, you know." Ailsa looked up, troubled: "You mean--_because_!" she said in a low voice. "Well _I_ don't consider him anything more than delightfully eccentric." "Neither do I. But all this is worrying me ill. His heart is so entirely wrapped up in it; he writes a letter to Washington every day, and nobody ever replies. Ailsa, it almost terrifies me to think what might happen--and he be left out!" "Nothing will happen. The world is too civilised, dear." "But the papers talk about nothing else! And uncle takes every paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of the _Herald_ arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire staff of the _Daily News_. It's all well enough to stand there laughing, but I believe there'll be a war, and then my troubles will begin!" Ailsa, down on her knees again, dabbled thoughtfully in the soil, exploring the masses of matted spider-wort for new shoots. Camilla looked on, resignedly, her fingers playing with the loosened masses of her glossy black hair. Each was following in silence the idle drift of thought which led Camilla back to her birthday party. "Twenty!" she said still more resignedly--"four years younger than you are, Ailsa Paige! Oh dear--and here I am, absolutely unmarried. That is not a very maidenly thought, I suppose, is it Ailsa?" "You always were a romantic child," observed Ailsa, digging vigorously in the track of a vanishing May beetle. But when she disinterred him her heart failed her and she let him scramble away. "There! He'll probably chew up everything," she said. "What a sentimental goose I am!" "The first trace of real sentiment I ever saw you display," began Camilla reflectively, "was the night of my party." Ailsa dug with energy. "_That_ is absurd! And not even funny." "You _were_ sentimental!" "I--well there is no use in answering you," concluded Ailsa. "No, there isn't. I've seen women look at men, and men look back again--the way _he_ did!" "Dear, please don't say such things!"