THERE was only one blot in the sweetness and light of Miss Mignon’s baby character, so far as the officers of the Scarlet Lancers were concerned. Among them all there was only one whom she did not like. She had degrees of love—Bootles ranked first, then Lacy, then two or three groups of friends whom she liked best, better, and well; but she had no degrees of dislike where she did not love. She hated, hated fiercely and furiously, hated with all her baby heart and soul. There were several persons in her small world whom she detested thus, absolutely declining to hold communication or to accept overtures from them, however sweetly made; but there was only one of the officers who came under this head, and he was Gilchrist, the man who had dubbed her at first _workhouse brat_. Miss Mignon could not endure him. When old enough to understand that a certain box of sweeties had come from Mr. Gilchrist, she would drop it as if it burned her fingers, draw down the corners of her mouth, and remark, “Miss Mignon is very much obliged;” an observation which invariably sent Bootles and Lacy off into fits of laughter, at which the little maid would fly open-armed to him, and cry, “But Mignon _loves_ Bootles.” But the fact remained the same, that Miss Mignon detested Gilchrist, who, indeed, was not a favorite in the regiment. Nor, indeed, did Gilchrist seem to like Miss Mignon any better, though he now and then brought his offerings of toys and bonbons like the rest. In the face of Bootles’s severe snub about the two odious words he had applied to her, he was hardly such a simpleton as to further rouse or annoy the most popular man in the regiment; yet if he could possibly cast a slur on Bootles or on the child he did it. Never from his lips came the pet name “Miss Mignon,” never did his black eyes rest on her without a sneer or a jibe; if he could by any chance twist Bootles’s words into an admission that the child was really his, he took care never to lose the opportunity. “Oh, come, now,” Preston cried one day, when he had been sneering at Bootles and Lacy, who had just driven away with the child between them, “Bootles is a right good sort—no mistake on that point. No sneaking hypocrisy about him. It would be well for you and me if we were half as fine chaps; but we are not, Gilchrist, and, what is more, we never shall be.” “Oh no; but where is the mother of that brat?” “How should I know? or Bootles? I shouldn’t mind laying my life that Bootles never did and never will cause her or any other woman to write such a letter as came with the child that night. Jolly good thing for this one if she was Bootles’s wife, instead of being tied up to the hound who bound her to secrecy and deserted her. Perhaps she’s dead, poor soul! Who knows?” “Perhaps she isn’t,” Gilchrist sneered. “Some people never die.” Good-natured and not very wise Preston stared at him, and Hartog looked from behind his newspaper, aghast at the bitterness of his tone.