Frances, already dressed in her soft light apparel of the morning, stood at the window watching the activity of the avenue below, answering encouragingly now and then, laughing at the right time, to keep the stream of her little guest's words running on. Frances seemed all softness and warmth, all youth and freshness, as fair as a camellia in a sunny casement, there at the window with the light around her. Above that inborn dignity which every line of her body expressed, there was a domestic tranquillity in her subdued beauty that moved even irresponsible Nola with an admiration that she could not put into words. "Oh, you soldiers!" said Nola, shaking her brush at Frances' placid back, "you get up so early and you dress so fast that you're always ahead of everybody else." Frances turned to her, a smile for her childish complaint. "You'll get into our soldiering ways in time, Nola. We get up early and live in a hurry, I suppose, because a soldier's life is traditionally uncertain, and he wants to make the most of his time." "And love and ride away," said Nola, feigning a sigh. "Do they?" asked Frances, not interested, turning to the window again. "Of course," said Nola, positively. "Like the guardsmen of old England, Or the beaux sabreurs of France--" that's an old border song, did you ever hear it?" "No, I never did." "It's about the Texas rangers, though, and not real soldiers like you folks. A cavalryman's wife wrote it; I've got it in a book." "Maybe they do that way in Texas, Nola." "How?" "Love and ride away, as you said. I never heard of any of them doing it, except figuratively, in the regular army." Nola suspended her brushing and looked at Frances curiously, a deeper color rising and spreading in her animated face. "Oh, you little goose!" said she. "Mostly they hang around and make trouble for people and fools of themselves," said Frances, in half-thoughtful vein, her back to her visitor, who had stopped brushing now, and was winding, a comb in her mouth. Nola held her quick hand at the half-finished coil of hair while she looked narrowly at the outline of Frances' form against the window. A little squint of perplexity was in her eyes, and furrows in her smooth forehead. Presently she finished the coil with dextrous turn, and held it with outspread hand while she reached to secure it with the comb. "I can't make you out sometimes, Frances, you're so funny," she declared. "I'm afraid to talk to you half the time"--which was in no part true--"you're so nunnish and severe." "Oh!" said Frances, fully discounting the declaration.