THE PLEADING EYES OF WOMEN It was May before the winter loosened its grasp on Fort Blizzard.

Once more, the fort was in touch with the outside world for a few months.

The mails came regularly and there were two trains a day at the station, ten miles away.

In May Anita had a birthday--her eighteenth.
"You can't call me a child any longer, daddy," she said to Colonel Fortescue, on the May morning when she was showered with birthday gifts.
Nevertheless, Colonel Fortescue continued to call her a child, but a glance at her reading showed that Anita was very much grown up.

She still read piles of books and pamphlets concerning the Philippines and knew all about the stinging and creeping and crawling things that made life hideous in the jungles, the horrors of fever, the merciless heat, and the treacherous Moros who stabbed the sleeping soldiers by night.