"But I do not like that," said Violet, drawing back. "You know you bade us not. It looks as if we were waiting for somebody." "Silly girl! That is just what you are doing: now isn't then. Come, I'll see you safe to the fence." So under that broad, protecting shadow the girls went down the walk; shy, and glad, and expectant, and just a trifle afraid; for were there not _four_ dark figures coming rapidly across the plain? It was all so strange and entrancing; the straight shadows, the measured step. "Ah, here you are!" cried Magnus. "Good-evening, Mrs. Ironwood." "How d'ye do again," said that lady. "How d'ye do, Mr. Trueman, and Mr. McLean--and, as I'm alive!--Mr. Bouché! I suppose two of you have come for me. I'm so broad, you think one wouldn't hear what the other was saying, and you could both fool me to your heart's content." There was a laugh and a protest (very honest, so far as the coming for _her_ was concerned), and then the young people turned away, and Mrs. Congressman went to her much coveted repose. "She fulfils her destiny," said Mr. Bouché, as he placed himself by Rose. "The only possible use of a chaperon is to go to sleep." XLIX FLIRTATION AND OTHER PLACES When feelings were young, and the world was new. --PRINGLE. There is no need to describe that walk, nor the many that followed it. Anybody who has been a girl--or had care of a girl--at West Point, knows without telling; though doubtless the walks vary according to the girl. But hither and thither, then as now, went Peace and War, in endless new combinations. Down among the grey rocks and green mosses of Flirtation, where the tide flowed by as softly as the minutes, and all the pretty whispers sounded true. Or up on the old fort; green enough once, but in these days pathetic as well as lovely in its helpless decline, and where much history might have been talked, and was not. Kosciusko's garden, Fort Clinton, even the Officer's Row--what tales they might tell, and are silent. I must do Mrs. Ironwood the justice to say, that she did not fulfil her destiny after that night, so far as it involved going to sleep when she should be on duty. And she did the duty well, as befits long habit. Always accidentally on hand; keen-eyed, though taking no notice; interfering when she must, in a way that was wholly pleasant--and unmanageable. The two girls, so unlearned in the world, could not have had a more wisely careful friend. Violet never guessed how it was that she was generally free to walk with Mr. Trueman, nor why Mr. Clinker always fell to the lot of Mrs. Ironwood herself. "She must be very fond of him," thought the girls. And Magnus was careful, too, in a way, and would by no means present everybody he knew to his two young sisters. So within that twofold invisible fence Violet and Rose moved joyously on, and had--as they wrote home--"the very loveliest time that girls could."