"
"I hardly think I should dance."
"Of course you will dance. If you refuse you will be put in irons and
taken out to-morrow and shot. It will do you no good to sit and think,
poor boy."
"I have no clothes," I protested.
"Johnson will have your boxes out in time. But you don't want your own
clothes. This is _bal masque_, of course, and you want some sort of
disguise, I think you'd look well in one of Matt's uniforms."
"That's so," said Stevenson, "we're about of a size. Good disguise, too,
especially since you've never been here. They'll wonder who the new
officer is, and where he comes from. I say, Kitty, what an awfully good
joke it would be to put him up against two or three of those heartless
flirts you call your friends--Ellen, for instance."
"There won't be a button left on the uniform by morning," said Kitty
contemplatively. "To-night the Army entertains."
"And conquers," I suggested.
"Sometimes. But at the officers' ball it mostly surrenders. The casualty
list, after one of these balls, is something awful. After all, Jack, all
these modern improvements in arms have not superceded the old bow and
arrow." She smiled at me with white teeth and lazy eyes.
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