He paused pudgily, as if he were mentally in full run and had brought up with a short stop.
"Oh, you—" he exclaimed, in the tone of making an exception, "you are you."
He felt equal to any arrangements for merely military mortals, but the "squaw question," as he mentally called it, overwhelmed him. With a lot of anxious, troubled, houseless women and querulous, distraught, frightened children, and difficult half-grown boys,—and the commandant's general orders to quarter them all to their satisfaction and to furnish whatever was necessary,—the strain might have proved too great for the old bustling sergeant, and like undue pressure on the boiler of one of our modern locomotives, which he much resembled, as he went back and forth puffingly, might have exploded his valuable faculties, but for Odalie's well-meant hints.
"I should give Mrs. Halsing the larger room if I were you," she suggested. "Mrs. Beedie is a friend of mine and I will answer for it that she won't mind." Or—"If I might suggest, I wouldn't put Mrs. Dean and the twin babies next to Mrs. Rush. Nervous headaches and other people's twin babies won't keep step—not one bit. Put them next to me. I am conveniently deaf at times."
And Mrs. Halsing said, "That French thing flirts with every man in the fort, from the commandant
