The chat continued until Trixy, who had once in ten minutes asked Jermyn the time, announced that she must go to wake her mother for breakfast. This reminded Kate that she had a brother to rouse, so she and the child went into the house. Half an hour later, while Trif and Fenie and Trixy with Jermyn, whom they had invited to breakfast with them, were chatting over their morning meal the head waiter brought Harry and Kate to the same table. There was no help for it, although Harry looked as if he wished there were; a head waiter is autocrat of his domain. As to the others, Trif exclaimed: "How delightful!" Fenie smiled pleasantly, although with some embarrassment, while Trixy shouted: "Hooray!" Kate bravely began operations at once. Fortune, in the guise of the waiter, had placed her beside Jermyn and Harry beside Fenie, so, Kate argued, if she were to monopolize the officer, Harry and Fenie would be obliged to talk to each other, and she was old enough to know that compulsory conversation has frequently broken the thickest of social ice. The plan worked finely. Harry and Fenie were obliged to talk to each other, for no one else spoke to either, and as each was determined that the other shouldn't think anything unusual the matter, each quickly became voluble and merry. Bless the transparency of youthful hypocrisy. Neither of those two young people imagined that any one was noticing them, yet Kate's heart was dancing with joy as she saw them frankly exchange tender looks, and Trif's mind lost a great weight so rapidly that she felt several years younger within half an hour, and she was made still happier when, as the entire party strolled toward the fort to see "guard mount," Jermyn had occasion to whisper to her: "Mr. Trewman is a remarkably fortunate young man--bless him." Guard mounting in the army is quite as ceremonious a matter as parade, and Jermyn had to answer many questions which Kate put in rapid succession, while Fenie, who had seen guard mount several times, explained everything to Harry. Trixy seemed interested only in the movements of a dog, which persisted in following every movement of the post band. Her mother gazed at her in adoration. How entirely the dear child seemed absorbed in whatever interested her--how oblivious to everything else! When the ceremony ended, and the little crowd under the live-oak trees broke up, Fenie and Harry, Kate and Jermyn, began to move slowly toward the hotel, while Trif and Trixy walked behind them. Suddenly, while no one else was talking, Trixy remarked: "Mamma, dear; wouldn't it be nice if they all got married, and----" "Sh--h--!" Kate suddenly asked Jermyn why it was that so large a fort had only a single flag-staff, and Harry hastened to give Fenie the details of a lumber contract concerning which he had come South, and Fenie listened as intently as if she knew lumber from timber, or any other commodity. CHAPTER VIII. A SNATCH AT TIME'S FORELOCK.