Trooper Tales — page 94: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

84 Two Women and a Soldier. “The captain is in the carriage. If you will show me where his apartments are, I will help him there.” “Oh!” This was all that the orderly heard from the young lady’s lips. Many elements were in her mind that moment. The splendid soldier whom she had so often thought about was before her. It was late. There was no one but the servants in the house, and they were asleep. She understood thoroughly the condition of her _ father. Being an officer’s daughter, she realized fully the indignity to which this man had been subjected. She felt too degraded for herself to pity Venning. His voice thrilled in her ears. She was a very young woman. Venning, the cavalryman, would have been a far dif- ferent fellow from Venning, the civilian, had he failed to understand the pressure of the moment. He thought of a couple of circumstances which occurred when he was not clothed in army blue. He thought of a bitter lesson he had learned from a woman, who was neither so young nor so innocent as the maiden who stood in the dimly lighted vestibule. He thought how sweet and dainty the captain’s daughter looked. He was tingling still from the shame in the café. Venning never was a saint. He had been a wooer many times, a student all his life, and a gentleman at all times. He was very human, however. He knew what was possible. Captain Bishop was in a deep and noisy sleep. Nor was he disturbed in any way when the orderly lifted him from the carriage to his apartments. The young woman CONNIE NOOKSEEO