By chance Mrs. Prescott had journeyed to West Point on the same
train.
Yet not a chance did Dick get for a word with his mother until
long after. He was almost frenzied with eagerness for word of
Laura, and this his mother would have, in some form, but he must
wait until all the duties of the day had been performed and leisure
had come to him.
Mrs. Prescott, on catching sight of her boy, felt a sudden, exultant
throb in her mother heart. Then she stepped quickly back, fearful
of attracting her lad's attention at a moment when he must give his
whole thought to his soldier duties.
"My noble, manly boy!" thought the mother, with moistening eyes.
"I wonder if I do wrong to think him the noblest of them all?"
Dick had caught that one swift glance, but did not again see his
mother, for his eyes were straight ahead.
When the time came for his particular company to wheel and swing
into the now moving line of gray, Mrs. Prescott heard his measured,
manly voice: "Fours left---march!"
When the last company of cadets had fallen into line, Mrs. Prescott
was one of the two dozen or so civilians who fell in at some distance
to the rear, climbing the slope behind the moving line of gray.
Wholly absorbed in the corps, Dick's mother had forgotten to
board the stage that would have carried her to the hotel.
After the visitors had been left at the hotel, the corps marched
away.
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