How beautiful it was! Privates in their glancing lines; cadet officers leading on, and running backwards or forwards with equally unerring footsteps. Heading all, the Commandant. Years had passed away since he learned the double-quick; and the supple boy had changed into the grey-haired man; but his foot never faltered, his step never lagged. The white-plumed blue uniform led on the grey with a gallantry it was pretty to see. Magnus watched the whole with deepest admiration; down to the last bit of timeful running with no music to mark it off.
He was noticing every step; eyeing the black shoe-soles that came up as one, the bent-knee line of white trousers, the glitter of the guns; forgetting everything else, when again the hated word came full upon his ear.
"Just look at that candidate, will you! It's as good as a play. I wonder he didn't join in."
"Ya-as," was answered in a drawling tone by her escort. "There he stands. Study his perfections now, while you can, Miss Jenny. Next week he will have ceased to shine upon the polite world. Exit the candidate, enter the beast. That is, if he gets in, which is doubtful."
A small thing may do the work where a large one fails; trains got no hearing, after that. That he would enter became instantly a fixed fact to that particular candidate.
The girl was certainly pretty. How would Cherry look, sitting there, and with himself in a grey coat bending over her, and twirling her parasol? Cherry was handsomer--miles away--than this girl. Deeper eyes, tenderer mouth, more glowing cheeks, too, for that matter. Yet she would not look _so_, the boy honestly owned to himself, though fuming a little over the admission; the whole make-up would be different. The very idea of such shoes as this damsel thrust out into the sunlight had never entered Cherry's wholesome head. "Shoe pegs," Magnus called the heels, with great scorn, and set right in the middle of her foot. And scarlet stockings. And her dress--what was it made of? No, Cherry would not look so; and however he might frown, Magnus felt the glamour, as most men do, of city dressmaking and "the correct thing."
"Country-made gowns look so different," said someone behind him.
Then that girl further on, in fluffs of white lace and muslin, white shoes, white gloves, and her dainty head crowned with "an acre" of Leghorn, and "a half bushel" of roses. No, neither would Cherry look like her. And now the boy's fancy brought the little country maiden, in her country garb--even her Sunday best--and set her down beside these two. A plain white gown, with no setting off but the simple ruffles which Cherry had embroidered, and the exquisite laundry work which she had also done herself. Black shoes, which were made for walking ("but either one of those white ones could hold 'em both," thought Magnus, in his hot fancy). Then a broad straw hat, round which Violet's deft fingers had twined a dark green riband; while the hands, which were small, indeed, and comely, but unwhitened with either idleness or lemon, wore only a pair of spotless Lisle thread gloves.