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In Elsie’s voice there was an edge of resistance, hearing which her mother, when she was wise, would let speech die and silence do its work. Her influence with the girl was strongest when least insisted upon. She was not wiser than usual that morning, but the noise of the train made niceties of statement impossible. She abandoned the argument perforce, and Elsie, left with her retort unanswered, acknowledged its cheapness in her own quick, strong, wordless way.

The dining-car would not be attached to the train until they reached Ogden. At twilight they stopped “twenty minutes for refreshment,” and the Valentins took the refreshment they needed most by pacing the platform up and down,–the tall daughter, in her severely cut clothes, shortening her boyish stride to match her mother’s step; the mother, looking older than she need, in a light-gray traveling-cap, with Elsie’s golf cape thrown over her silk waist.

The Eastern travelers were walking too. They had their tea out of an English tea-basket, and bread and butter from the buffet, and were independent of supper stations. With the Valentins it was sheer improvidence and want of appetite.

“Please notice that girl’s step,” said Mrs. Valentin, pressing Elsie’s arm. “‘Art is to conceal art.’ It has taken years of the best of everything, and eternal vigilance besides, to create such a walk as that; but c’est fait. You don’t see the entire sole of her foot every time she takes a step.”

“Having a certain other person’s soles in view, mammy?”

“I’m afraid I should have them in full view if you came to meet me. Not the heel quite so pronounced, dearest.”

“Oh, mother, please leave that to Mrs. Barrington! Let us be comrades for these few days.”

“Dearest, it would be the happiness of my life to be never anything but a comrade. But who is to nag a girl if not her mother? I very much doubt if Mrs. Barrington will condescend to speak of your boot-soles. She will expect all that to have been attended to long ago.”

“It has been–a thousand years ago. Sometimes I feel that I’m all boot-soles.”

“The moment I see some result, dear, I shall be satisfied. One doesn’t speak of such things for their own sake.”

“Can’t we get a paper?” asked Elsie. “What is that they are shouting?”

“I don’t think it can be anything new. We brought these papers with us on the train. But we can see. No; it’s just what we had this morning. They are preparing for a general assault. There will be heavy fighting to-morrow. Why, that is to-day!” Mrs. Valentin held the newspaper at arm’s length.

“Is there anything more? I can read only the head-lines.”

The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance, narrowing her eyelids.

“Mother, there was something else in Gladys’s letter. Billy Castant has enlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, while we were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he–he didn’t go home; he just enlisted.”

“The foolish fellow!” Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition told her there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon the presumptive cause. “The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But he won’t work for it. It’s easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider.”

“I don’t think it was easy at Las Guasimas,” Elsie said, with a strained little laugh. “You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle your volunteers?”

Mrs. Valentin listened with a catch in her breath. What did this portend? So slight a sign as that in Elsie meant tears and confessions from another girl.

“And did you hear of this only just now, from Gladys’s letter?”

“Yes, mother.”

“You extraordinary child–your father all over again! I might have known by the way you laughed over that letter that you had bad news to tell–or keep to yourself.”

“I don’t call that bad news, do you, mother? He does need an education, but he will never get it out of books.”