Betty at Fort Blizzard | Page 3

kind, they preferred a kicker to a non-kicker, and accepted, with delighted grins, Mrs. Fortescue's sweet words. But it was another thing when Mrs. Fortescue had to face a frowning husband.
Mrs. Fortescue tripped into the Colonel's office, and going up to Colonel Fortescue gave him two soft kisses and a lovely smile, and this is what she got in return, in the Colonel's parade-ground voice:
"I supposed I had made myself perfectly clear, Elizabeth, in regard to your riding that kicking mare."
"But, darling," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "I thought you wouldn't mind. And please don't call me Elizabeth. It breaks my heart."
"I must ask--in fact, insist--that you shall not ride that mare again," answered the Colonel sternly, without taking any notice of Mrs. Fortescue's breaking heart.
"And her name is Birdseye," plaintively responded Mrs. Fortescue. "Don't you remember, the first horse you ever put me on was your first Birdseye."
Mrs. Fortescue accompanied this information with a little pinch of the Colonel's ear. The Colonel remained coldly unresponsive; he had steeled his heart; the kisses and the pinch were hard to resist, but hardest of all the look of wide-eyed innocence in the dark eyes uplifted to his. Mrs. Fortescue would never see forty again, and her rich hair had a wide streak of silver running from her right temple; but she was the same Betty Beverley of twenty years before. The Betty Beverleys of this world are dowered with immortal youth and change but little, even under strange stars.
Mrs. Fortescue had never in her life been at the end of her resources for placating men. She withdrew her arms from about her husband's neck, and running lightly into the drawing-room took the After-Clap from Kettle's arms, and, throwing him pick-a-back on her shoulders, tripped with her beautiful man-child into the Colonel's office. Mrs. Fortescue and the baby were the only persons who ever took liberties with Colonel Fortescue.
The baby, charmed with his father's uniform, seized a shoulder strap with one hand and grabbed the Colonel's carefully trimmed mustache with the other, and lifted a pair of laughing eyes, wonderfully like his mother's, into his father's face. Mrs. Fortescue, at first as demure as any C. O.'s wife in the world, suddenly smiled the radiant smile that began with her eyes and ended with her lips. The woman's cunning was too much for the man's strength. Colonel Fortescue put his arm around his wife, as she laid the baby's rose-leaf face against his father's bronzed cheek. Husband and wife looked into each other's eyes and smiled. With this baby their lost youth was restored to them. Once more the Colonel was a slim young lieutenant, and Mrs. Fortescue was holding in her arms another dark-eyed, rose-leafed baby, now a young soldier in the gray uniform of a military cadet. They, themselves, could scarcely realize the flitting of the years. This new baby was a glorious surprise in their later married life. The baby's little hand had led them backward to the splendid sunrise of their married happiness.
"It is because I love you so that I can't--I won't let you ride that black devil, Betty dear," said the Colonel.
"How ridiculous!" replied Mrs. Fortescue. "You know I can ride as well as you can--can't I, After-Clap?"
"Goo-goo-goo-goo!" replied the baby, positively.
"And I never could understand why you should take the trouble to get angry with me," Mrs. Fortescue kept on, "when you can't stay angry with me to save your life."
Colonel Fortescue made a last stand.
"But if I didn't get angry with you sometimes, Betty----"
"'Betty' sounds cheerful," interrupted Mrs. Fortescue, and then there was peace between them.
Mrs. Fortescue and the Colonel went up-stairs to dress for dinner, and Kettle, on watch in the hall, took charge of the After-Clap, who commanded to be taken back into the office. Kettle, as always, promptly obeyed, and putting the baby on Sergeant McGillicuddy's desk, allowed the After-Clap to wreck everything in sight.
It had not been originally designed that Kettle should be the After-Clap's nurse. The colored mammy who had nursed Beverley and Anita with tender devotions having gone to her well-earned rest, Mrs. Fortescue had determined to be very modern with the After-Clap. A smart young trained nurse, in a ravishing cap, was his first nurse. But the baby showed such marked preference for Kettle, and Kettle dogging the baby by day and night and thrusting superfluous services and advice upon the nurse, she decided she would not stand being "bossed by a nigger," and took a train for the East. Then, Mrs. Fortescue determined to return to first principles and imported from Virginia, at great cost and trouble, a colored mammy, most capable and experienced. But the complications with Kettle grew more acute, and the mammy, in a blaze of indignation, took even stronger ground than the trained nurse,