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'The dear sort of girl! And I presume the young goose thought he had given a vivid picture." She turned to Major Darrett's note: a charming note it was to turn to. He had the gift of making himself very real and correspondingly attractive in those notes. A few days before she had been telling Ann about Major Darrett. "He's a bachelor," she had said, "and a joy."
And the other conditions things his sort stood for Darrett the whole story He had come to loathe the words chivalry and honor and all the rest of the empty terms that resounded so glibly against false standards. Something was wrong with the world and he could not see that improving a rifle was going to go very far toward setting it right.
Kate smiled knowingly; not that she actually knew much to be knowing about. She wondered why she did not disapprove of Major Darrett. Certain she was that some of the things which had kept his years from being hard, cruel, and lonely were in the category for disapproval. But he managed them so well; one could not but admire his deftness, and admiration was weakening to disapproval.
She seemed to see them off there in the background a lovely group of spoiled darlings. She did not suppose many of them were much the worse for having flirted with Major Darrett. Suddenly she laughed and told him she regarded him as one of the great educators of the age. He wanted to know in what way he was a great educator. Katie would not tell him.
And yet his own eyes would see more than Wayne and Harry Prescott had seen. Major Darrett had been little on the frontier, but much in the drawing-room; he had never led up San Juan hill, but he had led many a cotillion. He had had that form of military training which makes society favorites. As to Ann, he would have the feminine "specs" and the masculine delight at one and the same time.
The girl I care most about." Major Darrett was one of the group. Some one turned to him and asked if he had met her when she visited Katie at the Arsenal the summer before. He replied that he had had that pleasure and that she was indeed beautiful and very charming. Katie hated him the more for having to be grateful to him. She knew that he was sorry for her and grew more and more gay.
"I just wondered," said Zelda, "if she was going to marry into the army." Katie saw Major Darrett's smile. "If she did," she said, "the army would gain something that might do it good." Major Darrett was staring at her speechlessly. Harry gratefully. "You're very fond of her?" said Caroline Osborne in her sweet-toned way. "Very," said Kate in way less sweet.
"I should say, Katie dear, that you were a half-breed." "What a sounding thing to be! But Major Darrett in his last letter tells me I am his idea of a thoroughbred. How can I be a half-breed if I'm a thoroughbred?" "True, it makes you a biological freak. But you should be too original to complain of that." "But I do complain. It sounds like something with three legs.
Katie was intent upon the lights down below. "And what do you suppose he was prying around the Island for?" "I'm sure I have no idea," she managed to say. "Going to write a play a play about the army! Now what do you think of that? Darrett found out about it. Oh just the man, you see, to write a play about the army! And some sensationalists here are going to put it on.
Below, shyly off in one corner, written very lightly as if he scarcely dared write it, she found: "You don't know what a wonderful thing it is to me just to know that you are in the world." Katie went back to her guests with less gayety but more poise. Major Darrett had remained for a good-night drink with Wayne. He came out to Katie as she was going up stairs.
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