"Oh, I haven't time to talk about such petty details. I have some important matters to attend to," he returned loftily.
"It was you that started it," said the girl.
Wilfred turned suddenly, his manner at once losing its badly assumed lightness.
"Oh, you needn't try to fool me," he reproached her; "I know well enough how you have been carrying on since our engagement was broken off. Half a dozen officers proposing to you--a dozen for all I know."
"What difference does it make?" she retorted pertly. "I haven't got to marry them all, have I?"
"Well, it isn't very nice to go on like that," said Wilfred with an air into which he in vain sought to infuse a detached, judicial, and indifferent appearance. "Proposals by the wholesale!"
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Caroline, "what's the use of talking about it to me. They're the ones that propose, I don't. How can I help it?"
"Oh," said Wilfred loftily, "you can help it all right. You helped it with me."
"Well," she answered, with a queer look at him, "that was different."
"And ever since you threw me over----" he began.
"I didn't throw you over, you just went over," she interrupted.
"I went over because you walked off with Major Sillsby that night we were at Drury's Bluff," said the boy, "and you encouraged him to propose. You admit it," he said, as the girl nodded her head.
"Of course I did. I didn't want him hanging around forever, did I? That's the only way to finish them off. What do you want me to do--string a placard around my neck, saying, 'No proposals received here. Apply at the office'? Would that make you feel any better? Well," she continued, as the boy shrugged his shoulders, "if it doesn't make any difference to you what I do, it doesn't even make as much as that to me."
"Oh, it doesn't? I think it does, though. You looked as if you enjoyed it pretty well while the Third Virginia was in the city."
"I should think I did," said Caroline ecstatically. "I just love every one of them. They are going to fight for us and die for us, and I love them."
"Why don't you accept one of them before he dies, then, and have done with it? I suppose it will be one of those smart young fellows with a cavalry uniform."
"It will be some kind of a uniform, I can tell you that. It won't be any one that stays in Richmond."