PICTURESQUE AMERICA.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11279, 21 May 1902, Page 10

PICTURESQUE AMERICA.

Br Elizabeth H_r_a_. A blazing sun. • A hot wind blowing from the south over the great, parched Western plain. A fo.t making an oasis of greeti—lawns, trees, parade . ground!— the white stone houses suggiesting coolness. Around the officer.' quarters everything is still, but on the soldiers' line Private Dulin's wife is busy hanging up the clothe, that she this morning washed' for the colonel's family. "Katie!" called her husband's voice. "In tlie back yard.!'- answered Katie. Dulin came out cf the kitchen door. He ■was a little over medium height—-a clean, well set up young fellow, with alert, trustworthy blue eyes. "What do you think?'* he said; meaningly, with a delighted grin. '1 don't know. TeU roe!" cried Katie, {jiving a shirt a twirl that sent it over tihe ine, and running to her husband. . "How do you like being a nonoommi-sion'a wife?" said DuMn, swelling out his chest. "Oh, Dulin, is it so?" cried Katie, dutchinc has arm. His answer was what the colonel's answer to hia wife .would have been if h._had just been made a brigadier, or what the President's would be if be were made Czar—a hug and a kiss. • Mrs Dulin executed a brief sort of war dance, caught up ten months old little Katie, and held her out to Dulin. "Kiss your dad, baby, and mind you saint- him!" she said, guiding the little to -the little forehead.. "Your dad's a corporaH, missy! A noncommissioned officer! Now, ain't w§ proud!" And the three were hopelessly confused and tangled in a. general embrace. "Katie, I want to congratulate you," said •Mrs Ck____el. when Katie took the wash home two days .late. "The colon., tails mc your husband .has been promoted. 'Corporal Dulin' sounds very fine!" "Yes'm. . ______ you. And he says — I'm sorry, 'Mrs Colonel, for I've always liked to work for you—-_ut h. says he doesn't want mc to wash any more. ' He says, for a corporal's wife, he don't think it 'ud be just the thing. But I hate to think of them pretty nightgowns of, yours bein' done up by some one that don't know lace from a dish towel.". . , And Katie heaved a sigh for. her foregone profession. But noblesse oblige. The years passed. " Corporal Dulin, being a good man, rose through the various grades until he became a quartenß-ster-sergeant, with station at a po%t near Washington. Mrs Dulin hod become reconcLed to "position," a/id employed a half-grown coloured girl' to help her. • She took the widowed co?.__ti_sary sergeant to mess,' and 'between Dv_in's good pay and perquisites i and her good management, they had a oo__- | for table s, am iv the bank, nob to mention 1 two' sma/1 houses that they had (built near the re__irvation and rented to married soldiers. _ _ -- Libt__ Katie was sixteen; a tall, pretty girl, with yellow hair and brown eyes, and style: When she jumped out of the school herdic, | with her music roll, under .her arm—for she 1 was sent to a convent, and took "extras"— dressed in her. blue serge suit with the little otter neckpiece ___;____", and the dark blue hat trimmed with' a black wing and a twist of velvet, she was worth looking at. And so thought several young privates and band-men, and so thought" the widowed commissary sergeant,'and co thought boozy old Major Hill. i Katie laughed at the privates and bandsmen, and went to the soldiers' hops with them and was a * bttle. Aid she told the commissary sergeant, gently f enough, that , she / couldn't —" that' it wouldn't be jusit to him—that though he wasn't old—oh, no!—still, she was so young But she listened to the major, for his wife was ddLicate, and Katie had the curse —ambition. '. Not thai, the major did anything that was really co__p___n__ng. He was just usually around when the > school herdic came home, and always had something to say to "the pretty little Duttn *girl," as Katie was known in. the garrison. And quite frequently he found it necessary to speak to Sergeant Dulin—after school hours—about the hay or the grain, and Katie usually opened tlie door to him. One a_-ern_cvn when he went to speak to Sergeant DuEin, he "beard "Katie singing at the piano, and softly stepped into the little parlour. She }_>_____ over her shnxukk. and started up. 1 "Go on," he said. '■"■■* I And -lie obeyed him, taking up the song where she had left it. Her voice was true and _weet, and her hands were fine, white lady bands. When she had finished,- she dropped hex hands in her lap, and turned around and looked at him, _____ril__g. "Katie, you musn't marry a private," he said. She smiled in a half-amused fashion. "But who else would marry mc, a sergeant's daughter?" she .aid. "Well, I would, by Jove, if I were not married already?" said the major. Three, weeks* after Mrs Hi-1 died. ! The day after her funeral, the major went to Dulin's house. Katie was there alone. Was she waiting for hdm ? "Oh, major!" she said, a_ in joyous surprise, when she opened the door. "Katie, I've come to ask you to marry -te,'' said the major. "Major?" she exclaimed, in questioning surprise. "Yes. Will you?" he demanded. She held out both her hands, and stood looking, at him for a* moment. Then she ■aid, suo-ply: "___."

One evening six months later, while his daughters, Mary and Flora, were away oh a visit,- Major Hill asked all the garrison to hi. house to have a j£ass of punch. Everyone went. When the major had greeted the last comer, be.said: , "My friends, when the glasses are filled I want to propose a toast." Then he stepped out before them all, holding his glass up, and said : '*To my wife." There was dead silence. Then everyone turned and stared at his neighbour. "He's crazy!" whispered one of the women, clutching ths arm of the man beside her. "Drunk, more likely," said the man. But the major bad opened the door behind him, disappearing for a moment, and came back, leading Katie. She wore a white dotted Swiss evening dress, and a big white chrysanthemum in her hair. Again there was a dead silence. The major raised his glass, and stilt holding Katie's hand, repeated: "To my wife!" Two-thirds of the officers and their wives put their glasses down wherever they could find place, for them, and went out. For the major had broken the unwritten law. He, a commissioned officer, had married tbe daughter of a sergeant. But the third remaining drank the toast, and then went forward to shake hands with Mrs Hill and congratulate the major. So Katie had been cut by the great majority of her husband's associates. B_t she was an officer's wife, and entitled to be presented at the American Court in Washington. She never showed any disposition to gloss over her humble parentage, but always kept on her dressing-table a photograph of her mother, in her best black sitk, with jet spar-ling on the broad bosom, and one of her father in his full dress uniform, the sergeant's stripes showing honourably on his sleeve. To say that the major's daughters were amazed when the news reached them, is putting it mildly. They were outraged, as any girls would be, to see their n_Sther's place taken so soon—and by a sergeant's daughter. They had to go home to live, however. Lack of money is hideous under some circumstances. Katie, behaved better than they did. She insisted upon the major giving them as much as he gave her. This the girls'accepted as only their right; which, perhaps, it was, but they wouldn't have got it if it had not been for Katie. She pretended, even to the major, not to be furious when they invited people to dinner and made all the arrangements without "consulting her. They never introduced anyone 'to her. if they could avoid it. In less than six months, Mary was married to aMr Carter, a lieutenant in the army, and Flora went to live with her, in Kansas. At the ripe age of twenty, Katie was step grandmother to two d-ldren. Then the major's aunt died, leaving him a comfortable little fortune. Then the major died, leaving the fortune to Katie. Major Hill had been dead two years when the Carters were ordered to Washington. Katie was living in Washington, too. The Carters had only their pay-—and the two children and Flora—and if it had not been for Katie's generosity, insisting upon dressing the children, and giving her stepdaughter- an occasional gown or hat, things .would have been rather hard on the lieutenant. But lately Flora bad plucked up courage, for Sir Charles Beauclerk, an English lord and rich, had met her and her sister at a reception, had shown himself attracted by their simple, cordial manners, and had readily accepted their invitation to go to see them at their pretty little home. He was a fi-eshly-wrubbed .coking fellow of thirty or thereabouts, clean shaven, cocksure of himself, .and yet easily embarrassed, when his fine colour would "run from his cheeks all over his face and forehead, but he never would flinch or drop his eyes: * Flora tried to be very English, and insisted that all the family must plunge at once into the English manner of speech. So insi-tent was she upon this point, that one day little Oaroline, the eldest babyran to her and, looking' up with a troubled expression on her four year old face, asked solemnly: "Aunt Flora, what's de bwoad a for ice cweam?" One afternoon, Sir Charles was taking tea at Mrs Carter's for the second tone that week. There were muffins and scones and bettered toast and cakes, .sitting decorously, and as Englishly aa possible, in a muffin stand. Mary had lent Flora her three rings, and had asked her to pour the tea. Care—he and Mossy were brought down by their nurse, and Caroline, moving slowly, her eyes glued to the cup and saucer which she beta"with both hands, was intrusted with Sir Charles's tea. "Dran'ma 's toman' dis afternoon. I met her dis"morhih', an' se said.so," she volunteered, looking up at him, relieved, as he took it from her. "Is she?" said Sir Charles. "I know she is a dear old lady, and that yon love her very much." Enter grandma. A vision of lo.eli_.__. in "a white muslin gown, all tiny tucks and lace, and a white hat, drooping softly over her • golden hair, and trimmed with lace and pink roses. *__;_. stepmother, Mrs Hill, Sir Charles Beauclerk," said Mary, icily. And Sir Charles blushed. The next afternoon he took tea with Mrs Hill. The afternoon, after that he drove with Mrs Hill. Two weeks after that Flora accepted an' artillery lieutenant. In London, after the first drawing-room that season, the papers said:— Prominent among those presented was Led. Beauclerk, an American woman of rare beauty and charm. Tall, slender, and most exquisitely gowned, she showed to perfect advantage on her white neck and aims, and in her golden hair; the magnificent Beauclerk jewels. Lady Beauclerk promises to be the most brilliant social success of tho season. So Fortune turns her wheel. Good luck to you, Katie, Sergeant Dulin's daughter I