In her uncertainty she went for advice to Mrs. Whipple, the wife of a retired army officer, who had been her mother's friend. Mrs. Whipple was a woman of wide social experience and unusual common sense. She had settled in her day many of those distressing complications which arise at military posts in times of national peace. Young officers still came to her for advice in their love affairs, which she always took seriously, but not too seriously. Warry Raridan maintained unjustly that Mrs. Whipple's advice was bad, but that it did the soul good to see how much joy she got out of giving it. The army had communicated both social dignity and liveliness to Clarkson, as to many western cities which had military posts for neighbors. In the old times when civilians were busy with the struggle for bread and had little opportunity for social recreation, army men and women had leisure for a punctilious courtesy. The mule-drawn ambulance was a picturesque feature of the urban landscape as it bore the army women about the rough streets of the new cities; it was not elegant, but it was so eminently respectable! There might be an occasional colonel that was a snob, or a major that drank too much; or a Mrs. Colonel who was a trifle too conscious of her rights over her sisters at the Post, or a Mrs. Major whose syntax was unbearable; but the stars and stripes covered them all, even as they cover worse people and worse errors in our civil administrators. It gave Evelyn a pleasant sensation to find herself again in the little Whipple parlor. The furniture was the same that she remembered of old in the commandant's house at the fort. It had at last found repose, for the Whipples' marching days were over. They made an effort to have an Indian room, where they kept their books, but they refrained from calling the place a library. On the walls were the headdress of a Sioux chief, and a few colored photographs of red men; the couch was covered with a Navajo blanket, and on the floor were wolf and bear skins. When chairs were needed for callers, the general brought them in from other rooms; he himself sat in a canvas camp chair, which he said was more comfortable than any other kind, but which was prone to collapse under a civilian. The wastepaper-basket by the general's table, and a basket for fire-wood were of Indian make, dyed in dull shades of red and green. "My dear child," Mrs. Whipple began, when Evelyn had explained her errand; "this is a very pretty compliment they're paying you,--don't you know that?" "Yes, but I don't want it," declared the girl, with emphasis.