The first member of the Fortescue household who met Broussard gave him a rapturous greeting. This was Kettle, who opened the massive doors to visitors.
"Hi! Mr. Broussard, I cert'ny is glad to see you, and Miss 'Nita, she is right heah in the drawin'-room, and I spect she jump fer joy when she see you!" shouted Kettle, who was a child of nature and spoke the truth as he saw it.
"And I'm glad enough to get back to snow and ice after snakes and mosquitoes and Moros," replied Broussard.
Immediately a small financial transaction passed between Broussard and Kettle, accompanied with the usual wink from Broussard and grin from Kettle.
"She doan' take no notice of none of 'em," whispered Kettle confidentially, "she jes' smile at 'em all and goes 'long thinkin' about you!"
This was most encouraging and Broussard considered it well worth a quarter.
As he entered the drawing-room, bright with a glowing wood fire, Anita, who was entrenched behind a little tea table, rose to greet him. She wore a little white gown and like another white gown of hers it had a train--Anita was very anxious to appear as old as possible. As Broussard spoke to Mrs. Fortescue, who received him with her usual graceful cordiality, they could hear from the plaza the band playing the solemn hymn which precedes the retreat on Sunday afternoons. Suddenly the sunset gun roared out, showing that the flag was descending from the flagstaff. At once, every one in the room rose and stood respectfully at attention until the flag came down. Broussard, in the friendly shadow of the tea table, held on a moment to Anita's hand. She looked straight away from Broussard, her red lips smiling at an infatuated second lieutenant on the other side of her, but her cheeks, already of a delicate rose color, hung out the scarlet flag which means, in love, a surrender. Broussard even felt a faint returning pressure of the fingers, so well screened that only they themselves knew of the meeting of the hands.
Then they all sat down again and the pleasant talk began once more, Anita taking her part with a subdued current of gaiety unusual in her, for, as Mrs. Fortescue was essentially L'Allegro, so Anita was by nature, Il Penseroso.
Once more, when the color-sergeant brought the flag in, and placed it in a corner of the fine drawing-room, all present stood up; then there was much merry chatter and tea and chaff and that universal kindliness which seems to develop around a friendly tea table. One thing surprised Broussard--not only that Anita appeared quite grown up but that she could talk of many things of which he had never before heard her speak. As for the Philippines, she had all the lore about them at her finger tips. Broussard, watching her out of the tail of his eye, saw that she was no longer the adorable child, who lived with her birds and her violin, but an adorable woman, who had learned to think and feel and speak as a woman. How was it that she had read so many books on the Philippines?