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“I don’t like children slopping their knowledge all over me,” said the Doctor’s wife.

“He’s well brushed, though,” said Mrs. Duane, seeking the bright side. “He’ll wipe his feet on the mat when he comes to call.”

“I’d rather have mud on my carpet than that bandbox in any of my chairs,” said Mrs. Starr.

“He’s no fool,” mused the Doctor. “But, kingdom come, what an ass!”

“Well, gentlemen,” said the commanding officer (and they perceived a flavor of the official in his tone), “Mr. Albumblatt is just twenty-one. I don’t know about you; but I’ll never have that excuse again.”

“Very well, Captain, we’ll be good,” said Mrs. Bainbridge.

“And gr-r-ateful,” said Mrs. Starr, rolling her eyes piously. “I prophecy he’ll entertain us.”

The Captain’s demeanor remained slightly official; but walking home, his Catherine by his side in the dark was twice aware of that laugh of his, twinkling in the recesses of his opinions. And later, going to bed, a little joke took him so unready that it got out before he could suppress it.” My love,” said he, “my Second Lieutenant is grievously mislaid in the cavalry. Providence designed him for the artillery.”

It was wifely but not right in Catherine to repeat this strict confidence in strictest confidence to her neighbor, Mrs. Bainbridge, over the fence next morning before breakfast. At breakfast Mrs. Bainbridge spoke of artillery reinforcing the post, and her husband giggled girlishly and looked at the puzzled Duane; and at dinner Mrs. Starr asked Albumblatt, would not artillery strengthen the garrison?

“Even a light battery,” pronounced Augustus, promptly, “would be absurd and useless.”

Whereupon the mess rattled knives, sneezed, and became variously disturbed. So they called him Albumbattery, and then Blattery, which is more condensed; and Captain Duane’s official tone availed him nothing in this matter. But he made no more little military jokes; he disliked garrison personalities. Civilized by birth and ripe from weather-beaten years of men and observing, he looked his Second Lieutenant over, and remembered to have seen worse than this. He had no quarrel with the metric system (truly the most sensible), and thinking to leaven it with a little rule of thumb, he made Augustus his acting quartermaster. But he presently indulged his wife with the soldier-cook she wanted at home, so they no longer had to eat their meals in Albumblatt’s society; and Mrs. Starr said that this showed her husband dreaded his quartermaster worse than the Secretary of War.

Alas for the Quartermaster’s sergeant, Johannes Schmoll, that routined and clock-work German! He found Augustus so much more German than he had ever been himself, that he went speechless for three days. Upon his lists, his red ink, and his ciphering, Augustus swooped like a bird of prey, and all his fond red-tape devices were shredded to the winds. Augustus set going new quadratic ones of his own, with an index and cross-references. It was then that Schmoll recovered his speech and walked alone, saying, “Mein Gott!” And often thereafter, wandering among the piled stores and apparel, he would fling both arms heavenward and repeat the exclamation. He had rated himself the unique human soul at Fort Brown able to count and arrange underclothing. Augustus rejected his laborious tally, and together they vigiled after hours, verifying socks and drawers. Next, Augustus found more horseshoes than his papers called for.

“That man gif me der stomach pain efry day,” wailed Schmoll to Sergeant Casey. “I tell him, ‘Lieutenant, dose horseshoes is expendable. We don’t acgount for efry shoe like they was men’s shoes, und oder dings dot is issued.’ ‘I prefer to cake them cop!’ says Baby Bismarck. Und he smile mit his two beaver teeth.”

“Baby Bismarck!” cried, joyfully, the rosy-faced Casey.” Yo-hanny, take a drink.”

“Und so,” continued the outraged Schmoll, “he haf a Board of Soorvey on dree-pound horseshoes, und I haf der stomach pain.”

“It was buckles the next month. The allowance exceeded the expenditure, Augustus’s arithmetic came out wrong, and another board sat on buckles.