The Desert and the Sown | Page 4

"It's impossible to shop by mail," Mrs. Bogardus said decidedly. "They
always keep a certain style of things for the Western and Southern
trade."
The colonel was crushed. Mrs. Bogardus rose, and he picked up her
handkerchief, breathing a little hard after the exertion. She passed out,
thanking him with a smile as he opened the door. In the hall she
stopped to choose a wrap from a collection of unconventional garments
hanging on a rack of moose horns.
"I think I shall go out," she said. "The air is quite soft to-night. Do you
know which way the children went?" By the "children," as the colonel
had noted, Mrs. Bogardus usually meant her daughter, the budding
tyrant, Christine.
"Fine woman!" he mused, alone with himself in his study. "Splendid
character head. Regular Dutch beauty. But hard--eh?--a trifle hard in
the grain. Eyes that tell you nothing. Mouth set like a stone. Never
rambles in her talk. Never speculates or exaggerates for fun. Never runs
into hyperbole--the more fool some other folks! Speaks to the point or
keeps still."

II
INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW
The colonel's papers failed to hold him somehow. He rose and paced
the room with his short, stiff-kneed tread. He stopped and stared into
the fire; his face began to get red.
"So! Moya's clothes are not good enough. Going to set the people to
work, is she? Wants an outfit worthy of her son. And who's to pay for it,
by gad? Post-nuptial bills for wedding finery are going to hurt poor
little Moya like the deuce. Confound the woman! Dressing my
daughter for me, right in my own house. Takes it in her hands as if it
were her right, by ----!" The colonel let slip another expletive. "Well,"
he sighed, half amused at his own violence, "I'll write to Annie. I
promised Moya, and it's high time I did."
Annie was the colonel's sister, the wife of an infantry captain, stationed

at Fort Sherman. She was a very understanding woman; at least she
understood her brother. But she was not solely dependent upon his
laggard letters for information concerning his private affairs. The
approaching wedding at Bisuka Barracks was the topic of most of the
military families in the Department of the Columbia. Moya herself had
written some time before, in the self-conscious manner of the newly
engaged. Her aunt knew of course that Moya and Christine Bogardus
had been room-mates at Miss Howard's, that the girls had fallen in love
with each other first, and with visits at holidays and vacations, when
the army girl could not go to her father, it was easily seen how the rest
had followed. And well for Moya that it had, was Mrs. Creve's
indorsement. As a family they were quite sufficiently represented in the
army; and if one should ever get an Eastern detail it would be very
pleasant to have a young niece charmingly settled in New York.
The colonel drew a match across the top bar of the grate and set it to his
pipe. His big nostrils whitened as he took a deep in-breath. He reseated
himself and began his duty letter in the tone of a judicious parent; but,
warming as he wrote, under the influence of Annie's imagined
sympathy, he presently broke forth with his usual arrogant
colloquialism.
"She might have had her pick of the junior officers in both branches.
And there was a captain of engineers at the Presidio, a widower, but an
awfully good fellow. And she has chosen a boy, full of transcendental
moonshine, who climbs upon a horse as if it were a stone fence, and
has mixed ideas which side of himself to hang a pistol on.
"I have no particular quarrel with the lad, barring his great burly
mouthful of a name, Bo--gardus! To call a child Moya and have her
fetch up with her soft, Irish vowels against such a name as that! She
had a fond idea that it was from Beauregard. But she has had to give
that up. It's Dutch--Hudson River Dutch--for something horticultural--a
tree, or an orchard, or a brush-pile; and she says it's a good name where
it belongs. Pity it couldn't have stayed where it belongs.
"However, you won't find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very
proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which
he gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with
them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the
property and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on the newest reforms.

And there's another hitch!--To belong to the Truly Good at twenty-four!
But beggars can't be choosers. He's going to settle something handsome
on