That afternoon Marion Ray, seated on the vine-shaded piazza, writing to her husband, looked up suddenly at sound of a footstep and, startled and for a moment speechless, gazed into the once familiar features of Margaret Dwight's once devoted husband. She was slow to rise and hold forth her hand, so strange was the expression in his tired eyes. When she could speak it was to say, though her heart fluttered, "Welcome again, Major Dwight, but I'm so sorry Will is not here, too! It is barely a week since he started."
"I have hurried," was the answer, as he took her hand. "I am so tired of leave, of dawdling, of--almost everything. I'm wild to get to work--to _work_ again, Mrs. Ray! That's what a man must have."
All the old strength and repose of manner had gone. She was shocked and troubled at the change, and hurried on in her words lest he should see it.
"And how is my boy--our little Jim? And--I hope Mrs. Dwight is well, and--we're to see her soon," she ventured.
"Mrs. Dwight is looking remarkably well, though she and I are anxious about her mother. Indeed, I had hoped to find dispatches--or something--here from Major Farrell," and surely Dwight's face betrayed rather more than his words. "Jimmy's in fine trim," he hurried on. "They got to be fast friends voyaging. They were up on deck all the homeward way, whereas I'm a very poor sailor. I could hardly, hold up my head from the time we left Gibraltar."
"I'm glad of that--friendship," said Marion gravely, guardedly, for already, in the friendship Minneconjou had been hearing of, little Jim was not included. The _Hohenzollern_, after a stop-over at Algiers, had been boarded at Gibraltar by two crestfallen gentlemen in khaki and a quandary. The transport had preceded the liner into the shadow of the sleeping lion just thirty hours, and, steaming on to sea before the latter was signaled, found some hours out that Foster and Gibson had been unaccountably left behind. At their own expense, their soldier wardrobe and toilet replenished by a score of jovial Britons who had also contributed to their detention, these two warriors completed their voyage, and Gibson said he was practically alone, for, from morn till nearly midnight, from off Cadiz until held up at quarantine, Foster had been dancing attendance on the lovely Mrs. Dwight, the captain being much of the time down with _mal de mer_.