United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ten days of horrible anxiety followed. Then word came that the relief party had reached the post in time. The forces surrounding the place had been scattered, and the post was safe. There had been a sharp fight, though, and among those who had been badly wounded was Lieutenant Day. Of course he got well. No man could help it, with four such nurses as Mrs. Allenthorne and Mrs.
With a beautiful grace of manner and expression, the Visayan went to the other woman, and again speaking as if she thought her words could be understood, held out the picture which she had kissed, for the stranger to look at. The photograph was that of a young American officer, in a lieutenant's uniform. Grace Allenthorne and her mother had lived in Manila for several months.
Lieutenant Chickering was on duty when Miss Allenthorne arrived, and she devoted two hours that evening to hearing Lieutenant Day describe the city as he had found it. The next morning Lieutenant Day was on duty, and she went to ride with Lieutenant Chickering, possibly to learn if the information she had been favoured with the night before had been correct.
And it was Lieutenant Day's picture which she had seen the Visayan woman kiss. One day General Allenthorne sat on the verandah of his house with an American acquaintance, the agent of a business firm, who had been sent to the Philippine Islands to see what opportunities there might be for trade there.
Circling the stone walls of the fort the riders had come upon a group of as many as fifty Visayan women kneeling on the ground, their faces turned devoutly toward a stone tablet let into the walls. An American soldier was doing sentry duty not far away. "Wait here, Miss Allenthorne," Lieutenant Chickering said, "and I'll find out from that man over there what they are doing.
"Oh, nothing, father," said the girl. "I don't know of any special reason. I think that you just imagine it." Which was, of course, a very wrong thing for her to say; for she knew perfectly well what the reason was. While they were still at table a messenger came post haste for General Allenthorne, with word that he was wanted at once at headquarters. He was absent nearly all night.
Lieutenant Chickering cantered back from the sentry's post. Finding his companion dismounted, he jumped down from his own pony and came to join her. The native woman had gone her way toward the city before he returned, smiling a good-bye to Miss Allenthorne when she found that her words were not understood, and hiding the photograph in her bosom as she turned to go.
Then there came one of those official wavings of red tape in the air, which army officers' families learn to dread as signals of approaching trouble, and Colonel Allenthorne was transferred from Luzon to Mindanao; and among the troops sent with him were the companies of the rival lieutenants.
Allenthorne was a soldier's daughter as well as a soldier's wife, so perhaps it was not necessary to explain so many things to her as it would have been to some people. Nobody ever knew or at least never told what explanation the young woman made to the Lieutenant, when he came back to consciousness and found her helping to care for him. Perhaps she did not explain.
At least that was what a certain young woman thought, when she could not help hearing this conversation in the room in which she had shut herself for the afternoon. That night at dinner Miss Grace Allenthorne, was so radiant that even her father noticed it. "What have you been doing, Grace?" he said. "What's the reason you feel so well, tonight? I havn't seen you look so fine for a month."
Word Of The Day