“Here—­you—­Richard, just come and be of some use to me.  I’m housekeeper to-day, and I want to go to the quarters.  Come along.”

Now Dick had a double grievance against this imperious young person.  He had fallen into the most violent love with her brown eyes and pink cheeks the moment he saw her; he had assiduously striven both to conceal and reveal this maddening condition of mind.  But he remarked with ungovernable wrath that, whenever Jack or Wesley came about, the heartless young jilt, made as if she didn’t know him; quite ignored him, and cared no more for his simple adoration than she did for the frisky gambols of Pizarro, the mastiff.  But she was so adorable; her Southern accent was so bewitching; she put so much softness in those amusing idioms “I reckon” and “Seems like,” “You others,” and the countless little tricks of the Southern vernacular, that Dick passed sleepless hours and delicious days dreaming and sighing and groaning and doing all manner of unreasonable things—­that we all do when we meet our first Rosas and they light the torch for other feet more favored than our own.

So, when Rosa called him to accompany her, Dick took the round basket she held out to him, and walked sulkily ahead of her, never opening his mouth.  When he had stalked along through the currant bushes, he half turned his face; she was walking demurely behind him, and he made a pretext of picking a currant to give her a chance to come abreast.  She did, and passed him trippingly, saying, as she cast a sympathetic side glance at him: 

“Toothache?”

He stood rooted to the spot with indignant amazement.  The heartless little minx!  How dare she talk like that to a soldier?

“Did you call some one, Miss Atterbury?” he said, with chilling dignity.  Usually he called her plain Rosa.

“I thought may be you had the toothache—­you kept so quiet.”

“No; I haven’t got the toothache.”  Poor Dick!  He said, to himself, that he had much worse.  But he wouldn’t gratify her with the acknowledgment of her triumph, and he stalked along with the basket over his head, as he had often seen the darkeys in the sun.  There was a faint little appealing cry from behind.

“Oh—­oh—­dear!”

“What is it; are you hurt?” he cried, rushing to where Rosa stood, balanced on one foot.

“There is a crab thorn an inch long in my foot; it’s gone through shoe and all.  That wretched Sardanapalus never clears the limbs away when he cuts the hedge.  I’ll have him horsewhipped.  Oh, dear!”

“Let me hold you while I look for the thorn.”

Dick cleverly slipped his arm about her waist and set the basket endwise for her to sit on.  Then kneeling, he picked out the thorn, which was a great deal less than the dimensions Rosa had described.  But he said nothing to her about picking the torment out and slipping it in his vest pocket.  He held the foot, examining the sole critically.  Finally, as she moved impatiently, he asked: