The change to Virginia was perhaps appreciated by no one more than Peter Snooks, that by no means unimportant member of the Dale family, whose activity knew no bounds. He raced madly about the plantation, to the consternation of the chickens and the terror of Mrs. Driscoe, who, never having owned dogs, fancied he was going to take up everything by the roots. But Peter Snooks behaved admirably. To be sure, he chased chickens, but what canine could resist that temptation? And it was recorded to his credit that he never hurt one of them. With Julie not well and Bridget and the two younger girls scarcely leaving her, Peter Snooks was forced to seek companionship out of the family—quite a new order of things—and chose George Washington, greatly to the delight of that ebony mite. What games they had out in the carriage-house and what antics the two cut upon the lawn playing circus for the edification of the people on the verandah! Hester herself was sometimes inspired to go into the ring and put Snooks through his tricks, which were many, herself performing some ridiculous caper which was received with wild applause. But Snooks had the best time when Hester and Nannie went riding, and he raced alongside and often way ahead, to his own evident delight though not always to the comfort of the horses.

Nannie, these days, was the happiest girl in the County, for she had her two cousins whom she adored and every prospect of a speedy adjustment of her love affair. She nearly hugged Julie to death whenever she thought of it and confided to Hester when they went off together that being engaged was just the loveliest thing in the world.

It would have been impossible to find two girls in greater contrast than Hester and Nannie, for all they were such chums. Nannie, in her white frocks and big sun hats, was a sweet little maiden whose soft brown eyes did not belie her disposition. She had a soft, drawling voice and dear little clinging ways that made the Colonel’s sobriquet of “Puss” seem most fitting. She was fast growing to womanhood, but was in all things childishly appealing, though that she was not without character was shown in various ways, culminating in her loyalty to Sidney Renshawe in spite of the painful opposition.

Hester wore white muslin frocks and big hats, too—relics of their last year’s Paris shopping. It had always been the avowed wish of their father that in the event of his dying before them they should not wear black. He had the strongest aversion to the garb of mourning and the girls remembered and respected his wishes. So they had made no change in their wardrobe, though since they had come down to Virginia they confined themselves almost wholly to white.

Simple enough these frocks were, but Hester wore hers with an air that gave them something of her personality and made her distinctive wherever she appeared. There was never anything nondescript about Hester. And her moods were so many and so varied that her cousin Nancy, who did not in the least understand her, told the Colonel despairingly that she must be a witch—there certainly was not a drop of Fairleigh blood in her. Julie, forced to be quiet through indisposition, was regarded by her cousin as really quite patrician and not in the least—and this was a wonderful admission—not in the least vulgarized by work. Colonel Driscoe agreed to her last statement and let the rest go. He found that the simplest way to avoid argument.

Kenneth Landor became a frequent caller and grew to be an immense favorite with the household, but he seldom had the satisfaction of more than a few words with Hester. One morning he rode over and deemed the Fates more than kind when, finding Julie on the porch, she sent him down into the garden, where she said he would find Hester helping George Washington pick blackberries.

His first glimpse of her was a sun-bonnet; then two sadly stained hands reaching up among the bushes, then a white figure in sharp relief against the green; then Peter Snooks barked and she turned and saw him.

“Good morning,” she said sweetly, from out of her sun-bonnet, giving him a look that seemed propitious. “Have a blackberry?”

“Thanks, don’t mind if I do. May I help pick?”

“If you like. I can’t stop, you know, for old Aunt Rachael is expecting them for dinner. We’re great cronies, she and I. I steal out to the kitchen quarters often to see her when Cousin Nancy is not looking.”

“Do you mind pushing back that sun-bonnet?” he asked beseechingly. “I know you’re inside of it somewhere and I should like to see you.”

She laughed and pushed it half way back. “If that does not suit you I’ll take it off altogether.”

“Oh, don’t do that, it’s so—so nice,” not daring to say how adorable he thought she was in it. “I like it the way you have it now. I never knew sun-bonnets could be so frilled and furbelowed.”

“It is Nannie’s—she is making Julie and me each one. She says they are a fad this year. They are pretty, aren’t they? But somehow they feel hot and then I just tie the strings loose and let it hang down my back like that. Cousin Nancy says a girl who will do that has absolutely no regard for her complexion. It would be funny, wouldn’t it, if I took to worrying about things like that? Why, where is George Washington? Gone? And you’re shockingly lazy! You haven’t picked a berry since you came!”

“I—I beg your pardon,” scarcely able to take his eyes off her, “I really mean to help.”

“How is Captain Loomis?” she asked, seeing that he seemed unable to do much of anything but stare at her. “Have you seen him to-day?”

“That little Virginian? He haunts our camp and talks to me by the hour about you! He is madly in love with you.”

“He is too silly to be anything else,” munching a berry.

“I do not like your way of putting it.”

“I mean,” she explained, swinging her sun-bonnet by one string, “that he does not know how to be sensible and I do not like him well enough to bother to teach him, so, as he is around a good deal I have to politely put up with him. I should think you knew me well enough by this time to know how I hate silly people.”

“Do you ever politely put up with me?”

“Sometimes,” teasingly.

“Hester, Hester,” called a fresh young voice, “are you down there? Come up out of the garden quick! It’s so cool this morning father says he’ll take us over to camp to see that fascinating Mr. Landor.”

Hester ducked her head in her sunbonnet and fled.

When she reappeared half an hour later she was in her riding habit, looking so trig and tailor-made and altogether conventional that Kenneth wondered if she could be the same mischievous sprite who had run away from him in the garden.

It was arranged that Landor should escort them over, and the adroit Hester managed that he should start off in advance with Nannie, she and the Colonel bringing up the rear. Julie and Mrs. Driscoe waved them off, then returned to their work of sewing for the soldiers. For Mrs. Driscoe was the president of a ladies’ patriotic aid society and found plenty for herself and the girls to do.

Hester looked forward with eagerness to reaching Camp Alger, which, though only six miles distant from Wavertree Hall, they had not yet visited. She rode along at first chatting gayly to the Colonel but at last was forced to keep her mouth closed on account of the dust. And who that experienced it, will ever forget the dust of that June in Virginia! Inches deep on the roads it lay in a thick brown powder which, at the slightest disturbance from man or beast, rose in choking waves, covering and submerging everything; while in the immediate vicinity of Alger, where the sentries warned every one that a gait other than a walk was not permitted in and about the camp, it smothered them to the verge of suffocation.

They approached their destination by way of the little village of Falls Church, where over the rough and winding road traveled a constant procession. It was said by the darkies in Virginia that spring, that all the “poor white trash” in Fairfax County had abandoned their farms and taken to “toting” people to Camp Alger. Vehicles of every description were going back and forth carrying people from the station to the camp, sometimes officers, sometimes soldiers, often visitors; in every case the seating capacity of buggy, carryall or wagon was stretched to its utmost capacity. Intermingled with this motley array were the army wagons loaded with camp provisions and paraphernalia, on the top of which usually perched two or more soldiers. These, drawn by four mules and driven by an antiquated darky, seemed to Hester the most interesting thing on the road, though possibly she made an exception in favor of the mounted orderlies flashing in and out through the crowd or an occasional mounted officer who saluted Kenneth and stared at the girls in open admiration.

As they crossed the picket lines, the camp lay before them—row after row of tents (reminding Hester of the card houses she used to build when she was little) not “gleaming white” like the tents of story but brown with the dust. Desiring to show them about before dismounting Kenneth took them on by his troop and through the roads leading by the various regiments. Of the thirty thousand men, more than half were encamped in the fields, now resembling arid plains, so destitute were they of vegetation; while the rest, more fortunate, were scattered through the surrounding woods, lost to sight except for the flutter of a flag above the trees.

The party did not attempt to cover the full length of the camp, for the sun was getting very hot and Kenneth was anxious to get them back to his troop in time for dinner. This, her first meal at an officer’s mess and in a tent, was one of the most novel and delightful Hester had ever known. Kenneth counted it the second time they had broken bread together and was blissfully happy. When it was over, in a fit of excessive magnanimity he hunted up Charley Bemis who he knew would like to see Hester again and brought him up to his tent, where the Colonel and the girls were resting. A little later they all strolled together over to the troopers’ quarters, young Bemis being anxious to show them the troop mascot, a stunning bull-terrier. Down here, too, were the horses, picketed back of the tents, while working among them were several troopers, one of whom Hester especially noticed tall and very blonde, his skin tanned to a deep brown. He wore the regulation campaign outfit, but his shirt was sleeveless. About his neck was knotted a yellow handkerchief, his soft hat was pushed well back with an upward turn to the front and he was busily engaged grooming his horse.

“That man,” said Kenneth, seeing that Hester observed him, “is the president of our coaching club at home and drives the best horses in Radnor. It’s great the way he, and in fact all the fellows have buckled down to work. He’s a chum of mine and I’d like immensely to have him meet you; I think you would enjoy him, too, but I won’t call him over. It would embarrass him to death to be caught like that.”

Hester looked at the trooper in admiration.

“Let’s get out of the way before he discovers us,” she said tactfully, “though I’d like to march straight over there and tell him how proud I am of him.”

Nannie, who had ideas of her own, rode off with her father when they started home. A mile or two on, the Colonel stopped and waited for them to overtake them, when he said, if Hester and Landor would excuse them he and Nannie would stop at the house in front of which they had halted and make a call. So the girl and man rode on alone through the beautiful woods which led to—was it happiness or only Wavertree Hall?

“Have you enjoyed it?” he asked when they had gone a little way.

“Oh! so much.”

“Even if you had to politely put up with me?”

“Well, there were others, you see. Mr. Bemis, and all those charming officers at dinner. Now I think of it, you never took us to the Virginia camp. Is Captain Loomis away?” looking up at him as if the whereabouts of that individual was the thing which most concerned her.

He laid his hand for a moment over hers. “It’s no use,” he said, “you can’t put me off with Loomis or any other man.”

The intense subdued manner in which he said it deepened the color in her cheeks, but her dimples played mischievously.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“Hester,” he replied, “do you remember a night in April when you and I talked together and you were kind and said things that would inspire a man to do anything? It was the first time you had ever been serious with me and you thought it was the first time I knew of the serious side of you, but that was not true. You turned my life into a new, better channel from the moment I first set eyes on you, dear. And I loved you so that night on the coach that I didn’t know how I was ever going to get through without telling you, but I didn’t want to take advantage of your goodness and I knew you cared nothing for me, though I was determined you should some day.” His voice rang out in the masterful way she had so often berated to Julie. “I am telling you this now because my opportunities of seeing you are so few and soon they may end altogether. Oh! Hester,” he cried, finding it impossible to restrain himself any longer, “couldn’t you learn to love me a little before I go away?”

She had listened with eyes gazing straight ahead of her. As he finished she turned and looked at him fearlessly.

“Are you quite sure I have not learned already?” she said. And then as he was about to speak, “No, no, do not answer me. I cannot answer the question myself. Sometimes I like you and sometimes I want to run away from you and sometimes—sometimes—”

He held his breath and waited.

But she did not finish it.

“We should never get on,” she said argumentatively, “we quarrel all the time. At least you do—I’ve an angelic disposition,” complacently.

“I quarrel with you? How could I!” endeavoring to fall in with her mood. “It is you who say shocking things to me, you bad thing; and sometimes, ah! sometimes, dear, you do hurt.”

She touched him impulsively. “It is only teasing. I never mean to hurt—I wouldn’t do it intentionally for the world.” How penitent and sweet her voice was!

“Then won’t you be kind to me, please, and love me a little bit?”

“A little bit? Would that satisfy you?”

“No,” honestly, “it would not. Oh! my dear, I will be very patient if only you will try.”

“I don’t have to,” she said.

“No,” despairingly, “you don’t have to.’

“Because—because—I do.”

The ambiguity of this might have been mystifying to any but a drowning man ready to clutch at a straw. Kenneth was raised to a seventh heaven of bliss and promptly kissed her; at which she blushed furiously and pushed him away.

“You must not believe everything I say,” she protested.

“But I do and I want to and I shall,” exultantly. “Oh, my dear, my dear, will you say it all over again?”

“Certainly not,” with pretended severity. And then with a light happy laugh, “Do you remember how I snubbed you on the street corner the day you met me at Dr. Ware’s?”

“Do I? Well, I should say I did! But you were even worse at Jack’s. You plunged me into the depths of despair, from which I never should have arisen if you hadn’t been so charming at Mrs. Lennox’s musicale. That night I began to take notice again, as it were.”

“Notice of Jessie Davis? I heard you were in love with her.”

“As if I had eyes for any one but you! I used to fairly haunt dear old Jack’s place in the hope of running across you, but you always managed to elude me.”

“I used to think at first,” she said seriously, “that you were just curious about us, because we were poor and earned our own living and were not like the girls in your set, and I resented it. That made me nasty to you, though I liked you all the time. Then, well,—do you know what I believe made me care for you? If you laugh,” earnestly, “I’ll never forgive you. It was because you took such care of me at the wedding and never offered me a bit of cake! You suspected we had made it, didn’t you? And I thought any man who had tact enough for that would be my undoing and I should not wonder,” with a swift look from under her long lashes, “if it were true, but you will never tell a soul I told you, will you?” beseechingly. “It’s a secret—the undoing, you know.”

“Darling,” he said, “I knew more about you and your work than you thought and that is why it was like wrenching my heart out to come away. I wanted to stay there where I could work for you and wait and hope that I might make your life easier. Then when you talked to me that night I knew that whether you ever loved me or not you would want me to go.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And now if you only loved me enough to marry me I might at least leave you my name and the protection of my father, whose home would gladly open to you and Julie if he knew. Couldn’t you do it, dear heart?”

“I—I don’t know,” she said so low that he could scarcely hear her. “I do love you, but it is all so new and strange that I cannot realize what it means or even if it means as much as it should to the man I marry. I want to be honest—and you offer me so much that I don’t know what to say. I don’t love you as I love Julie, and perhaps after that you will not want me to love you at all.”

“Yes, dear, I shall. If you care for me in any sort of way I am thankful and love is a thing that grows and grows. Some day I believe you will love me as much as you do Julie, but in a different way. There is room in your heart, dear, for both of us if you will only let me in.”

“That is just the way Julie puts it,” she answered. “She is going to marry Dr. Ware.”

“She is? Jove! what an ideal match!”

“That’s what I think. I would not have believed that I could contemplate sharing Julie and be as happy about it as I am. The night she told me I danced for joy! She needs a man to take care of her, and I love him with all my heart; it changes nothing inwardly and everything outwardly. I am going to live with them but I shall not mind being dependent on them for awhile. At first I thought I couldn’t, but they have made me promise. Dr. Ware is so dear. He says what is his, is Julie’s, and what’s Julie’s is mine, and,” laughing, “there is no getting around that, is there? Julie and I have always gone shares. Besides, I’m going to study to be a trained nurse when Julie is married. I couldn’t just sit down and be idle the rest of my days.”

“Thank God your work is over!”

“Not my work but that work. No one will ever know how hard it was; there was so little profit in most of the things we made that we could not afford to hire the necessary assistance and had to take the brunt of everything ourselves. We should have kept on until we ‘died in our tracks,’ to quote Bridget, if it had been necessary, but I thank God, too, that we are not obliged to. It taught us a great many things, the poverty and hardship and all,” she continued, feeling his interest, “and we shall be able to understand life and help people a great deal better because of it. Julie and I have had so many talks together both with Dr. Ware here and since he went North about all the things we mean to do. We look forward to a very busy life.”

“I am supremely glad that things have come out this way, dear,” he said, “only,” wistfully, “all these plans make me feel as if you had little need of me. Won’t you please,” gazing pleadingly in her eyes which shone steadfastly into his, “won’t you please see if you can’t make a place somewhere for me?”

Far off through the woods came the note of a bugle. Hester drew in her breath.

“Perhaps,” she said softly as they turned in the avenue, “I do need you and want you, too. Will you wait and see?”