"Why couldn't they have brought some conveniences, such as knives and forks and cups and platters, instead of fool trifles?" he demanded fiercely, aside, as he turned away from one group who were as destitute of all appliances as if they had expected to peck off the ground, or drink out of the bubbles of the spring branch. "I have got none to spare except those of the poor fellows who were killed and Corporal O'Flynn's, for he will be equal to nothing but spoon-meat for one while." "Oh, the poor settlers,--I pity them,--and poor Mr. Green,--I feel very guilty, for I came here just such a charge on the resources of the fort, myself." He paused pudgily, as if he were mentally in full run and had brought up with a short stop. "Oh, you--" he exclaimed, in the tone of making an exception, "you are you." He felt equal to any arrangements for merely military mortals, but the "squaw question," as he mentally called it, overwhelmed him. With a lot of anxious, troubled, houseless women and querulous, distraught, frightened children, and difficult half-grown boys,--and the commandant's general orders to quarter them all to their satisfaction and to furnish whatever was necessary,--the strain might have proved too great for the old bustling sergeant, and like undue pressure on the boiler of one of our modern locomotives, which he much resembled, as he went back and forth puffingly, might have exploded his valuable faculties, but for Odalie's well-meant hints. "I should give Mrs. Halsing the larger room if I were you," she suggested. "Mrs. Beedie is a friend of mine and I will answer for it that she won't mind." Or--"If I might suggest, I wouldn't put Mrs. Dean and the twin babies next to Mrs. Rush. Nervous headaches and other people's twin babies won't keep step--not one bit. Put them next to me. I am conveniently deaf at times." And Mrs. Halsing said, "That French thing flirts with every man in the fort, from the commandant down to Mrs. Dean's one-year-old boy twin!" For Odalie was presently conveying this juvenile personage about in her arms, and he left off a whimper, characteristic of no particular age or sex, to exhibit a truly masculine interest in the big soldiers with their bright uniforms and clanking accouterments, and although constrained by the force of the concussion to blink and close his eyes whenever the great guns were fired, he fairly wheezed and squealed with manly ecstasy in the sound--for a cannonade had begun, seeking to deter the plunder of the deserted houses in the settlement.