Wingfield, who had brought the prettiest of the débutantes down from the ballroom, paused a moment to catch the drift of the Colonel’s story. He was bound for the conservatory, where there were opportunities for the better study of his butterfly, who was a trifle awed by the attention of a grown man, one who had, in fact, been in her father’s class at Pennsylvania. Wayne, with something akin to a grin on his face, turned away abruptly out of hearing of his father’s voice, nodded to Wingfield and passed on. His friend, with the careless ease that distinguished him, had sighted a waiter and two chairs in a far corner of the conservatory and led the way thither. “Did you hear Julia Morse sting the Colonel?” he asked the girl, as he unfolded his napkin. “I shall have to look her up; I’ve done her a cruel injustice. I supposed Julia was a stanch subscriber to the Craighill superstition, but she’s clearly deeper than I imagined. It’s odd I never knew Julia’s true worth; I’m annoyed by my own density. The salad--yes!” “The Craighill superstition?” asked the girl, the knowledge and wisdom of Wingfield’s forty-three years towering over her youth and inexperience like a mighty cliff. “Just that--quite that! The Colonel’s military greatness ranks with the ladder superstition, the Friday superstition, the thirteen at table superstition, and all those things.” “But Colonel Craighill was a soldier in the Civil War--of course not in the Revolution, I know that.” “Now really, if you won’t ever say I told you--if this can be a little confidence just between ourselves as old friends--I’ll tell you something. The Colonel was never a real colonel at all. But when General Lee started for Chicago by way of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Pittsburg was terribly frightened, so the old folks say--I wasn’t here, I assure you!--and Colonel Craighill bossed the men who dug entrenchments around the city to keep the Confederates out. He did it well. When your father and I were kids together--doesn’t it seem absurd that you and I can’t be contemporaries, instead?--oh, my, please forget that I began that sentence; it leads clear back to the time when the Indians camped where the Craighill building stands. “Well, as I was saying, the Colonel was only a sort of home-guard trench-digger and that sort of thing. He helped the women manage fairs and did it very prettily, but ever since the War the Colonel’s stock as a red-handed slayer of his country’s foes has been rising. He ranks with Wellington and Grant, with a little dash of Sheridan thrown in.” “I sit behind Colonel Craighill in church and it doesn’t seem possible that he would deceive anyone,” remarked the girl, half afraid to yield to her delight in these profane utterances.