The Captain came to a rigid salute.

“April eleventh, eighteen-sixty-one!” he said with clean-cut precision.  “Good morning, Mrs. Paige!  How does your garden blow?  Blow—­blow ye wintry winds!  Ahem!  How have the roses wintered—­the rose of yesterday?”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir.  I am afraid my sister’s roses have not wintered very well.  I’m really a little worried about them.”

“I am worried about nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell,” said the Captain briskly.  “God’s will is doing night and day, Mrs. Paige.  Has your brother-in-law gone to business?”

“Oh, yes.  He and Stephen went at eight this morning.”

“Is your sister-in-law well.  God bless her!” shouted the Captain.

“Uncle, you mustn’t shout,” remonstrated Camilla gently.

“I’m only exercising my voice,”—­and to Ailsa: 

“I neglect nothing, mental, physical, spiritual, that may be of the slightest advantage to my country in the hour when every respiration, every pulse beat, every waking thought shall belong to the Government which I again shall have the honour of serving.”

He bowed stiffly from the waist, to Ailsa, to his niece, turned right about, and marched off into the house, his white moustache bristling, his hair on end.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Camilla patiently, “isn’t it disheartening?”

“He is a dear,” said Ailsa.  “I adore him.”

“Yes—­if he’d only sleep at night.  I am very selfish I suppose to complain; he is so happy and so interested these days—­only—­I am wondering—­if there ever should be a war—­would it break his poor old heart if he couldn’t go?  They’ll never let him, you know.”

Ailsa looked up, troubled: 

“You mean—­because!” she said in a low voice.

“Well I don’t consider him anything more than delightfully eccentric.”

“Neither do I. But all this is worrying me ill.  His heart is so entirely wrapped up in it; he writes a letter to Washington every day, and nobody ever replies.  Ailsa, it almost terrifies me to think what might happen—­and he be left out!”

“Nothing will happen.  The world is too civilised, dear.”

“But the papers talk about nothing else!  And uncle takes every paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of the Herald arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire staff of the Daily News.  It’s all well enough to stand there laughing, but I believe there’ll be a war, and then my troubles will begin!”

Ailsa, down on her knees again, dabbled thoughtfully in the soil, exploring the masses of matted spider-wort for new shoots.

Camilla looked on, resignedly, her fingers playing with the loosened masses of her glossy black hair.  Each was following in silence the idle drift of thought which led Camilla back to her birthday party.