Victorine looked
at the other with an exact mirroring of her mother's disdain.
"Good morning," Morice said indistinctly, hooking the collar of his
uniform. "It's a bloody nuisance," he asserted. "Why can't they copy
the English jacket?"
"It is much better looking," Louise added.
"Well," Rosalie proclaimed, "I'm glad to see Morice in any; even if it
means nothing more than a desk in the Quartermaster's Department."
"That is very necessary," August Turnbull spoke decidedly.
"Perhaps," she agreed.
"I think it is bad taste to raise such insinuations." Louise was
severe.
"An army," August put in, "travels on its stomach. As Louise suggests--
we must ask you not to discuss the question in your present tone."
Morice's wife half-audibly spoke into her melon, and his face reddened.
"What did I understand you to say?" he demanded.
"Oh, 'Swat the fly!'" Rosalie answered hardily.
"Not at all!" he almost shouted. "What you said was 'Swat the Kaiser!'"
"Well, swat him!"
"It was evident, also, that you did not refer to the Emperor of
Germany--but to me."
"You said it," she admitted vulgarly. "If any house ever had a
Hohenzollern this has."
"Shut up, Rosalie!" her husband commanded, perturbed; "you'll spoil
everything."
"It might be better if she continued," Louise Foster corrected him.
"Perhaps then we'd learn something of this--this beauty."
"I got good money for my face anyhow," Rosalie asserted. "And no cash
premium went with it either.
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