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Not yet nineteen, she had lived a busy, earnest, thoughtful life. The Cranstons had known her from early maidenhood. She was a child in the Southern garrison in the days of the great epidemic, when the young captain owed his life to the doctor's skill and assiduous care.
Was the Parson seeking solace where poor Mira always said he would? If so, he had little to build on by way of encouragement. The Cranstons missed him sorely when he went back to Gray, and Miss Loomis frankly referred to him as "most instructive" and much broadened and improved. She missed him as any one must miss so well-informed a companion.
The Cranstons, Trumans, and Hays, Boynton, Hastings, and Sanders, battle-scarred heroes, most of them, and dozens of others in the congenial circle; but Margaret Cranston sorely missed her boys, who were big enough now to be at school, and far too big to be staying around garrison.
This would not have deterred the chaplain in a matter of duty, however, for that honest and stalwart soldier of the cross was as ready to battle with himself as he was to take issue with the devil, but the chaplain had been absent for long days, and returned only when it was supposed that Mira would be whisked away to the agency with the Cranstons, and, safe in Percy's sheltering arms, be beyond the reach of harm or temptation.
Davies could return it when Uncle Sam resumed payment, and so Mira had been provided with a check-book and taught its use. She was, at least, to have no financial anxieties. The regiment had to remain long in the field and the Cranstons went home, as Davies expected and had advised that Mira go with them to Chicago.
Some vapid, frivolous, and would-be fashionable, but all full of kindly motive. She could have had luncheons, dinners, and parties in her honor, and secretly moaned that it could not be, but Mr. Davies's deep mourning prohibited. She had dined en famille and in deep constraint at the Cranstons the evening after her coming, and not all Mrs.
Some drunken men, or soldiers perhaps, gave us a little trouble. I'm going back after him now." "Hold on one minute till I see my wife and I'll go with you," sang out Darling, as he ran into the house, where Mira had sunk nerveless into a big chair and was wildly imploring Mrs. Darling not to leave her. The Cranstons were ready to start on the 23d, but nothing was in readiness at Mrs. Davies's.
"The Cranstons were among our oldest and best people," said Society; "it is too bad they are so poor." For there had been a time when the old lawyer's health failed and practice was forbidden, and when Wilbur, once the recipient of a liberal allowance, felt called upon not only to resign that, but often to help from a captain's pay.
The Cranstons' house was topsy-turvy, everybody in the midst of packing, but Langston had a box of bon-bons which the ladies, or the boys, might enjoy as reminders of Chicago, and he rang. Miss Loomis herself, in cap and apron, opened the door.
Devers were on hand, as befitted the official heads, temporary, of post and martial society, and the Cranstons with Agatha Loomis, after again going to see if they could do anything for Mrs. Davies, and again finding her absent from home, concluded to go over to the hop-room soon after taps, and the first thing that met their eyes was the sight of Mira Mrs.
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