“Why didn’t you meet us at the train?” she began, but stopped as she saw their dirty faces.  “Where on earth have you chimney-sweeps been?” she cried.

“Oh, about and about,” answered Malcolm, teasingly.  “Don’t you wish you knew?”

Virginia shrugged her shoulders, as if she had not the slightest interest in the matter, and held out two packages.

“Here are the valentines you sent for.  You just ought to see the pile that Aunt Allison bought.  We’ve the best secret about to-morrow that ever was.”

“So have we,” began Keith, but Malcolm clapped a sooty hand over his mouth and pulled him toward the door of their room.  “Come on,” he said.  “We’ve barely time to dress for dinner.  Don’t you know enough to keep still, you little magpie?” he exclaimed, as the door banged behind them.  “The only way to keep a secret is not to act like you have one!”

Virginia walked slowly back to her room and paused in the doorway, wondering what she could do to amuse herself until dinner-time.  It was a queer room for a girl, decorated with flags and Indian trophies and everything that could remind her of the military life she loved, at the far-away army post.  There were photographs framed in brass buttons on her dressing-table, and pictures of uniformed officers all over the walls.  A canteen and an army cap with a bullet-hole through the crown, hung over her desk, and a battered bugle, that had sounded many a triumphant charge, swung from the corner of her mirror.

Each souvenir had a history, and had been given her at parting by some special friend.  Every one at the fort had made a pet of Captain Dudley’s daughter,—­the harum-scarum little Ginger,—­who would rather dash across the prairies on her pony, like a wild Comanche Indian, than play with the finest doll ever imported from Paris.

There was a suit in her wardrobe, short skirt, jacket, leggins, and moccasins, all made and beaded by the squaws.  It was the gift of the colonel’s wife.  Mrs. Dudley had hesitated some time before putting it in one of the trunks that was to go back to Kentucky.

“You look so much like an Indian now,” she said to Virginia.  “Your face is so sunburned that I am afraid your grandmother will be scandalised.  I don’t know what she would say if she knew that I ever allowed you to run so wild.  If I had known that you were going back to civilisation I certainly should not have kept your hair cut short, and you should have worn sunbonnets all summer.”

To Mrs. Dudley’s great surprise, her little daughter threw herself into her arms, sobbing, “Oh, mamma!  I don’t want to go back to Kentucky!  Take me to Cuba with you!  Please do, or else let me stay here at the post.  Everybody will take care of me here!  I’ll just die if you leave me in Kentucky!”