The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.

Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed, descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it again she and I were alone inside.

She let me cut the flowers. "You know who\'s here?" she asked.

"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."

"I don\'t mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you\'d ever guess if you don\'t know; but you do, don\'t you?"

I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.

"Did you ever see her?"

"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she\'s got here--last --eh,--Thursday--morn\'--" I came back trimming the roses, and as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied, with a roguish droop of the head--

"She told us about it. And you needn\'t look so disturbed; she only praised you."

Still I frowned. "How does it come that she\'s here, anyhow?"

"Why! she\'s got to be everywhere! She\'s a war-correspondent! She was at the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it \'only a skirmish\'!"

"When did she get here?"

"About five in the morning. But we didn\'t see her then; she shut herself up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring risks! And they say she\'s so wise in finding out what the Yankees are going to do and why they\'re going to do it, that they\'d be nearly as glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn\'t you know? Ah, you knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.

"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."

I flinched angrily. "From what?"

She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That\'s what he asked me to call him."

I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have raised a tune. "Don\'t you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch.

"Like whom?"

"You know perfectly well," she replied.

"No, I do not like him. Do you?"

"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked rapidly, and said "If I oughtn\'t to call him--that,--then I oughtn\'t to have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.

"That," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped it was!"

Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say had hoped?"

It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".

"Why, I--I didn\'t know you ever did say it. I don\'t see that I have any right to forbid you saying thi............