So now, as their special guests for this most auspicious occasion, they were taking along just these three--Rita Covington, a little eighteen-year-old beauty, and Minnie Lyon, a tall, fair, slender, pretty girl, and Mrs. Mc-Laurin. The two girls were in white linen, with touches of red at throat and waist; but young Mrs. McLaurin, who was a bride of two years' standing and plump and handsome, looked doubly handsome and perhaps a wee mite plumper than common in a tailor-made suit of mouse-gray, that was all tricked out with brass buttons and gold-braided cuffs, and a wide black belt, with a cavalry buckle. That the inspired tailor who built this costume had put the stars of a major-general on the collar and the stripes of a corporal on the sleeve was a matter of no consequence whatsoever. The color was right, the fit of the coat was unflawed by a single wrinkle fore or aft, and the brass buttons poured like molten gold down the front. Originally young Mrs. McLaurin had intended to reserve her military suit for a crowning sartorial stroke on the day of the big parade; but at the last moment pride of possession triumphed over the whisperings of discretion, and so here she was now, trig and triumphant--though, if it must be confessed, a trifle closely laced in. Yet she found an immediate reward in the florid compliments of the old men. She radiated her satisfaction visibly as Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward ushered her and her two charges aboard the car with a ceremonious, Ivanhoeish deference, which had come down with them from their day to this, like the scent of old lavender lingering in ancient cedar chests. A further martial touch was given by the gray coats of the old men, by the big Camp badges and bronze crosses proudly displayed by all, and finally by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who, true to a habit of forty years' standing, was wearing the rent and faded jacket that he brought home from the war, and carrying on his shoulder the ancient rusted musket that had served him from Sumter to the fall of Richmond.