JULIE WAS IN BED WHEN HESTER CAME IN THAT NIGHTJULIE WAS IN BED WHEN HESTER CAME IN THAT NIGHT
“I was tempted to, but out of consideration for Mrs. Lennox I spared him the shock. And then what do you suppose? I got the gold dollar! I would not have bothered to put such a polish on it yesterday if I had known it was coming back to me!”
“Did you throw it out of the window in your best high-tragedy style?”
“No, I gave it to Mr. Landor. He looked so cross when Mr. Bemis joined us that he was absolutely funny, so I thought I’d just give him a little present—‘for a good boy on his birthday’ or something of that sort, you know, only he wasn’t so alarmingly good and it wasn’t his birthday,—at least I don’t suppose it was, do you?”
“Hester, you do talk the most idiotic nonsense!”
“Do I? Well, I’ve been pretty serious the past hour,” she said soberly as she slipped off her gown and seated herself on the edge of the bed preparatory to taking down her hair. “Julie, we are going to have war!”
To Julie, who could not be expected to know her sister’s train of thought, this announcement seemed so irrelevant that she looked at her wonderingly.
“It was not in to-night’s paper,” she said.
“No, but it is in the air. Mr. Landor thinks it is inevitable. He talked with me to-night about a friend of his who’s crazy to go. I didnot suspect a thing at first but afterward I did—it’s himself, Julie—he means to volunteer with the first call for troops.”
“That is just what I should expect of him, Hester.”
“Y-e-s,” reluctantly, “but do you know from things he said it is evidently going to be a tussle for him to make up his mind to leave. He is all upset about it and oh! Julie dear, how I did wish you were there to talk to him—you always say such beautiful, helpful things. It is some one he cares about—perhaps it is his father. Do you suppose itcouldbe any one else, Julie?”
“I don’t know, dear”—certain suspicions in regard to Landor gaining ground every minute—“perhaps it is Jessie Davis,” wickedly, for Julie could do her share of teasing too.
“That fashion plate!” scornfully. “I don’t believe a word of it! She’s not fit to button his shoes!”
“Probably she would not care to,” remarked Julie, intensely amused at this taking up of the cudgels in Landor’s behalf; and then, thinking it best—this wise Julie!—not to prolong the jest, she said, “It is probably his father. He is old, you know, and Mr. Landor may hesitate to go off and leave him. I am glad he talked with you, dear, about anything he had so much at heart, for it shows how much he appreciates andvalues your opinion and you probably talked to him twice as well as I could, you funny little baby owl!”
Hester’s reply to this was to fling herself down on the foot of the bed and cry in a muffled tone, “I’m so tired—so dead tired! I didn’t realize it until I kept so still coming home and then I ached so I wanted to scream while Mr. Landor was talking to me!”
Julie’s arms were around her in a moment. “The strain has been too much, dear. You cannot stand the work and play too,—it is no use trying.”
“But I like to play,” cried Hester rebelliously, “and sometimes I feel so wicked—as if I couldn’t keep up my end another minute, and then I want to run away—all of us run away—to have ‘The Hustle’ again and go racing out of all this, and then,”—her voice broke,—“Oh! then Julie darling, I am so ashamed of such thoughts—so humiliated to think I can’t be as patient as you are!”
“I know, dear,” stroking her sister’s hair softly, “and I am not patient—not half as patient as I try to be—only I hold myself with a fearfully tight rein for fear I’ll go all to pieces. We are both pretty much knocked out now, dear, with the strain of the winter, the newness of things and—”
“Not to mention being half fed,” inserted Hester.
“But we have paid all our expenses as we’ve gone along and kept out of debt even if we have half starved to do it. You see, dear, up to now,” said Julie, the accountant, “we have had to put such a large amount of our earnings back into the business for all sorts of things.”
“Imagine what cousin Nancy would say if she knew how we wriggled along on almost nothing, you and I!”
“She’d say we were fools not to have accounts with the butcher, the baker and candlestick-maker but we do not agree with her, and Daddy, bless his heart! does not want for anything. Thank heaven, we’ve accomplished that much! Isn’t it a mercy, dear, that he does not realize things? It would break his heart!”
“Oh! yes, but how I do long to have our darling old Daddy back!”
Julie said nothing. Her chin was very rigid but in a few moments she said cheerfully, “I think the spring promises a good deal. Our work increases every day and we can soon begin to live better. Bridget says marketing is much cheaper in the summer, and if we only make enough now to carry Daddy comfortably through the dull season when people are away and we are not earning much, we’ll get on famously.Just think what magnificent times we’ll have this summer just loafing around Daddy’s room!”
Hester, who seldom allowed herself such luxury of woe as she had just been indulging in, sat up, wiped her eyes on the corner of the sheet and said emphatically, “I’m a fiend and I ought to be cow-hided!”
“I’ll paddle you instead,” said Julie, picking up the hair-brush Hester had dropped and making as if to apply the back of it vigorously.
Hester dodged but Julie caught her and, springing out of bed, planted her firmly in a chair and said, “I’ll brush that crazy head of yours and help you to bed or you’ll never get there! It must be all hours of the night.”
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” remonstrated Hester.
“I won’t, and if you’ll keep as still as a mouse and not scream when I comb your hair—”
“You pull like the dickens; you know you do!”
“I do not and I wish you’d stop talking and give me a chance. I declare you get worse every day—I tremble to think what you’re coming to!—and I’ve, oh! such a piece of news to tell you!”
She was wholly unprepared for the clutch of Hester’s arms about her neck as she cried,“Don’t tell me to-night, Julie dear, I—I know—all—about—it!”
“Do you?” holding her fast. “Then aren’t you glad it has all come out this way?”
“Yes, Julie darling,” stifling a sob.
“Why, Hester, what is it? You must not cry, dear. I can’t think what is the matter!”
“I’m a selfish brute, but oh, I’m not really, Julie—not really. I think it is the most beautiful thing!”
“What is ‘the most beautiful thing’?” wondering if the child were losing her mind.
“That he’s been here. I knew it the moment you spoke. As if he’d fail to come!”
“Hester! do you mean you think that I—I—”
Hester nodded.
“But I don’t dear, not the least little bit in the world!”
“Oh, Julie!”
For a moment they clung together. Then Julie gave a hysterical laugh.
“What a silly old goose you were to go having absurd thoughts about me, and how dared you, howdaredyou think I was in love with any one?”
“I did not know,” penitently, “you kept so still about Monsieur Grémond and hewasin love with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes dear. He came this afternoon and Isent him away. We do not want to have secrets from each other, do we, old girl, but I never talked to you much about him because there was a time when I did not quite know whether I cared for him or not. Perhaps back in the old days, if he had asked me, I might have said yes, but I doubt it—it was more a sort of fascination he exercised over me for awhile and now I am truly thankful he has come and gone. He has removed every particle of doubt as to my attitude toward him.”
“Oh, I am so glad. I couldn’t bear the thought of his carrying you off to France.”
Julie’s eyes opened wide. “Did you suppose I’d go away and leave you and Daddy and the rest?” in a tone of astonishment.
“Some Prince Charming is coming along to carry you off some day, Julie dear,” said Hester, who could bring herself to regard such an event with some degree of complacency now that it was not an immediate fact. “I’m not quite such a selfish pig” (she never spared herself in the matter of epithets), “as to expect to have you always.”
“I think we are sufficient unto each other now, dear,” said Julie seriously, “and we may always be, for all the years to come; but if some day our lives should change—a new interest enter in—we’ll share it and make it beautify thelives of both of us just as we’ve always shared every joy and sorrow ever since we were babies.” She kissed her sister solemnly.
“You blessed Julie!” was the response.
When the gas was out and Hester, the irrepressible, finally in bed, the light of the full moon came streaming into the little room. And lingering with a caressing touch it fell upon a white pillow on which a curly golden head and a sleek dark one lay pressed close together. In the solemn stillness the breathing of two slender forms told that the excitement of the past forty-eight hours had at last ended in much needed sleep.
Mrs. Driscoe was not a reasonable woman, never had been reasonable, had no desire to be reasonable; it was therefore not to be expected that she would take a reasonable attitude toward Sidney Renshawe when he went down to Virginia early that spring and asked her for her Nannie. In vain did he argue and cajole, in vain did the dear Colonel remonstrate, in vain did little Nannie cry and plead; to one and all she turned a deaf ear. It was no—no—no then and forever.
The County discussed the situation freely and wondered that so worldly a mother should frown upon so eligible aparti. Sidney Renshawe was well born, fairly rich, rising steadily in his profession; all the County knew that much, though it is doubtful if any one of them had ever been in Radnor. What if Renshawe’s hair was red and his mustache a trifle bristly? Didn’t that add a touch of strength to his face and suggest a resemblance to a certain Prisoner of Zenda, who, though only a man in a book, as every one said, was, nevertheless, the most idolized of heroes.As for poor little Nannie, it was plainly to be seen she was losing flesh over the situation.
As she wrote the girls, she was “torn by conflicting emotions,” using the well-worn phrase because the poor little thing had no words of her own in which to express her feelings. She had never had complex feelings before. Hitherto her life had consisted in loving and being loved, which led her naturally enough into a similar state of things with Sidney Renshawe, who came, saw and conquered her girlish heart. The Colonel was her stanch friend and ally. He liked Renshawe and felt he was just the man to whom he could trust his little girl when the time came to give her up. And that was not necessarily imminent, for if Mrs. Driscoe was unreasonable Renshawe certainly was not and was willing to wait one, two, three years if need be. But Mrs. Driscoe remained obdurate and the household was plunged into a state of strained atmospheric conditions such as had never been known before.
“I can’t help loving him and it isn’t wrong to love him, is it?” little Nannie would say appealingly to the Colonel.
“No, no, Puss, be patient. We’ll win her over soon.” It is doubtful if the Colonel believed this cheerful prophecy, but the child had to be comforted.
Renshawe had remained two weeks with his friends at the plantation adjacent to the Driscoes, seeing Nannie every day. Mrs. Driscoe did not refuse him this boon but, declined to receive him herself and intimated so plainly that the man’s room was preferable to his company that the girl took little pleasure in his visits and agreed with him that it was far better he should go away. Without her mother’s permission she refused to become engaged but the night previous to his departure she allowed him to slip on her finger a certain simple little ring which he reminded her he had been carrying in his pocket since the night they met. The next day he went north leaving his heart in Virginia, with a delicious sense of its security in Nannie’s keeping. The consciousness was strong within him that the winning of such as she was worth the waiting.
And Mrs. Driscoe all this while went about with the aggrieved air of one whose troubles were scarcely to be understood by an unsympathetic world. If she had been put to it she could have given no reason for her opposition to Renshawe, for she had none and had shown him marked favor at the beginning. But that was before, as she told the Colonel, “her suspicions were aroused.” From the moment they were, Renshawe was made unpleasantly conscious of it.
While Nannie, sustained by the Colonel andthe County’s backing, got what solace she could out of the days that were so long and oh! so lonely after Sidney left her, he, back in Radnor, turned for comfort to the Dale girls, who took him into their hearts for Nannie’s sake and soon learned to like him for his own. He became a frequent visitor, calling usually Sunday afternoons when he felt he would be less likely to disturb them, and he wrote Nannie that except a certain little girl in Virginia whose name he would never divulge, they were the sweetest girls he had ever known and the bravest. But he did not tell Nannie how as he came to observe them more closely he discovered in their faces little careworn lines which told a tale their lips never would have disclosed and how about Julie, especially, there was a subdued, almost intense manner, as if she were holding herself in a vise. They never spoke of their work or their cares to him or any one else and made light of any passing reference to their business. Indeed, as far as Sidney might have known from them, they lived quite like other girls.
In regard to his friend Grémond’s previous connection with them or of his call on Julie, Renshawe knew nothing. The Frenchman left town the day following that on which he had seen Julie and had not referred to the Dales in any way either to him or Dr. Ware, who was left todraw his own conclusions. This was not so simple as might be supposed, for while in one light the man’s sudden disappearance looked as if Julie might have given him his congé, viewed from another point, especially taken in connection with a certain happy light in Julie’s eyes these days when he caught her glance, it led him to believe that perhaps the girl had given him her promise but required that he should wait yet a longer time to claim her. The Doctor longed to know and wearied himself with imagining why she did not confide in him. But since she did not, delicacy forbade his mentioning Grémond’s name.
Another person who did some speculating over Grémond was Mrs. Lennox, but being a woman she arrived at her conclusions quickly and decided that his precipitous flight to France when he had been booked for some weeks in Radnor, argued ill for the result of his trip across the country. She was not at home the one time he had called on her and the fact that he was not at more pains to seek her out and continue the confidential relations established in her sanctum on his previous visit, satisfied her that he could not have found what he was so eagerly seeking. Being a sympathetic woman she was sorry, but she would have thought more of him had he chosen to tell her the outcome of his affairs. Ashe did not, she dismissed him from her mind altogether, having agreed with Miss Marston one day when they were discussing him, that he was a clever man but after all a trifle too self-centered. To tell the truth Mrs. Lennox had been mistaken in her analysis of his character and it annoyed her.
A fortnight after the wedding the Dale girls were devouring with eager eyes one morning a very small note and a very large check which they could scarcely read, so great was their excitement.
“Oh, what a relief!” cried Julie, “to know that everything pleased Mrs. Truxton, and how good she was to write such a kind appreciative note to people like us whom she scarcely knows! Let’s go and read it to Bridget.”
Bridget, when she heard it, was reduced to tears and presently they were all laughing and crying together, for the work of this first big order had been more of an anxiety than any one of them cared to acknowledge, while its success expressed so kindly by their thoughtful customer meant as much in its way as the accompanying check, which fairly dazzled them.
“One hundred and twenty-five dollars!” cried Hester ecstatically. “We’re millionaires! Oh— oh—oh! to think of ourearningso much money!” She waved the check wildly over herhead and even insisted that Peter Snooks should have a sniff at it before she said, “Wouldn’t you just like to frame it and keep it forever?”
“I know what I should like best of all to do with it,” said Julie.
“I bet Miss Hester can guess by the knowin’ look in her eyes,” said Bridget. “It’s meself that knows too, what your blessed selves is thinkin’.”
“Of course you both know,” Julie said quietly, “we want to begin to pay Dr. Ware rent.”
They went the next afternoon to his office. On the doorsteps they encountered Miss Ware, who turned about as she saw them approach.
“Don’t let us detain you,” said Julie politely, “we have just come for a little business talk with your brother.”
“Ah!” she replied, “I fancied you got about all of that sort of thing you wanted at home. You’d better come upstairs and let me make you some tea—you look peaked, both of you. Philip ought to give you a tonic. Tell him I said so, and come up afterward. I insist upon it and shall have the tea ready. It will not do you any harm to sit down in a different atmosphere for a while. I suppose you do get sick to death of a kitchen.”
There was no doubt that Miss Ware possessedto perfection the faculty of rubbing one the wrong way, but Julie deemed it wise not to decline these overtures and made no further protest against her going in with them.
“Horrid old thing! How I hate her!” whispered Hester, as Miss Ware went on upstairs and they waited a moment in the Doctor’s ante-room.
“So do I, but she’shissister and she means well.”
“You’d find excuses for the old boy himself.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” laughed Julie, “but—here’s Dr. Ware.”
He bowed to them as he entered from the private office and passed by with an elderly man, with whom he was in deep conversation. In a moment he returned and greeted the girls warmly.
“Well,” he said, giving each a hand, “this is delightful. Come into the other room. That was old Mr. Landor—Kenneth’s father, by the way—did you notice him? He is about half Kenneth’s size, but he has force enough for a dozen men. I wish you girls knew him.”
He pulled out chairs as he talked and ensconced the girls comfortably, then stood against the table facing them with arms folded and the smile on his face which Bridget vowed was “like the blessed sun for warmin’ the cockles of your heart.”
“It is good to have you here,” he said heartily, “I wish you came more often. Perhaps,” with a laugh that showed the gleam of his white teeth, “I do not give you a chance—I go so often to see you.”
“If you came every hour of the day it wouldn’t be too often,” exclaimed Hester, who never loved people by halves. “But Julie is going to do the talking to-day. I intend to keep still.”
“As if you could! Well, Julie?” smiling at her.
“We have come to have a little business talk with you,” she said, twisting her fingers together nervously and finding it a little difficult to begin.
“Delighted to be so honored,” he replied lightly, bowing low.
“It is about the—the rent,” said Julie, who wished her words would not stick in her throat. “We are getting on so well with our work that we want to begin to pay you. We thought if you would let us begin this month and—”
“And not object or scold us or anything,” broke in Hester who never could remain out of a conversation, “but just take the money, we’d feel a thousand times happier, though no money or anything else could ever express our gratitude for all you are doing.”
He still leaned against the table with foldedarms but the smile had given place to an expression of sadness.
“Have you both quite finished?” he asked when Hester had stopped for lack of breath.
“We never could finish talking about your kindness,” put in Julie.
The Doctor raised his hand as if to waive that aside. “I have listened to your proposition,” he said, “because I am a practical business man and I understand your spirit. It is the height of your ambition to be independent.”
“Yes,” they assented.
“When your father broke down,” he continued, “I longed to take you all home and look after you. I was amply able to do it and he is my oldest and best friend. I would have done it, too, if you girls had not astonished me by displaying so much courage and such a determination to fight your own battles that I could only stand aside and watch you work out your own salvation.”
“You have made the way easier all the time,” said Julie tremulously.
The Doctor cleared his throat.
“I have been so glad to share a bit of the responsibility, but now my faithful little comrades want to shoulder it all.”
“Oh, Dr. Ware, you don’t think—” began Hester impulsively.
“Yes, I do think,” he interrupted, “that you have the right idea and whatever my personal inclination may be, I like your spirit of independence and it shall be as you say.”
Hester flung her arms about his neck and kissed him. “Do you know,” she said brokenly, “Julie and I are getting so puffed up with conceit over our business prosperity that presently you will disown us altogether.”
“Shall I?” holding her fast. “What do you think, Julie?” with a searching gaze into the face of the older girl who stood a little apart from them.
Julie flushed and turned her eyes away—tell-tale eyes like hers were not to be trusted. “I think,” she said with a supreme effort to speak calmly, “I think we had better go upstairs for tea. Miss Ware will be wondering what has become of us.”
When the Doctor learned that tea was brewing in the library he followed them upstairs and electrified his sister by handing about tea and taking a cup himself with as much complacency as if he were in the habit of dawdling around a tea-table every afternoon of his life. Miss Ware wished he hadn’t come, for she had intended to ply the girls with questions about their work; questions which in the presence of her brother she hesitated to ask, standing, as she did, in considerableawe of him. She did manage, while he was talking to Hester, to catechise Julie a little, but that young woman’s answers were so evasive, yet withal so sweetly polite that Miss Ware felt very much as if she were hitting a rubber ball, which, while showing the imprint of her attack, bounded back every time to the starting point. It happened also that Dr. Ware having some notion of what his sister might be up to, rescued Julie from too prolonged a tête-à-tête and with infinite tact kept the conversation in such general channels that personalities were forgotten and Miss Ware quite shone in her desire to be agreeable. There are many persons who, given their own conversational way, manage in the course of an hour to reduce to a state of irritation every person in the room, yet who, guided and steered by a stronger force, rise to the best that is in them and produce such a favorable impression that one wonders how one ever thought them other than agreeable. It was thus with Miss Ware, who under the guidance of her brother, appeared to the girls in a new light, and she herself had the unusual sensation of regretting that they had taken so early a departure.
“I wish I had asked them to stay on to dinner,” she said when they had gone.
“I wish you had,” said the Doctor, accustomed to her after thoughts.
“Why didn’t you suggest it?”
“I was not sure that it would be agreeable to you, Mary.”
“Humph!” she said. Then critically, “Hesterisextraordinarily pretty—and what an air! She’s almost conspicuous. How is your scheme about Kenneth getting on?”
“It is not a ‘scheme,’ Mary. I wish you would not express it just that way. And I have concluded I am not the right person to go in for match-making. Think no more about it.”
“Humph!” she said again.
“I doubt if either of the girls will care to marry,” he volunteered.
“Girls are queer,” she said sententiously.
“Are they?” he rejoined wearily. “I do not think I know.”
That spring would always be a memorable one both to the girls and the country at large, for momentous events followed one upon another in rapid succession. War was declared with Spain, as Kenneth had prophesied, and all the bustle and activity attendant upon the preparations of hostilities with a foreign power were felt throughout the nation.
Kenneth, believing such a crisis inevitable, had prepared to respond promptly to the first call for troops.
There had been a fierce tussle with his father when first he broached the subject, but by that time Mr. Landor had learned that Kenneth’s was not a nature to be forced into subjection and heard him out with far more respect than would have been accorded him a year ago. Mr. Landor suggested, in the course of the talk, that it was a pity to leave the business just as he was mastering it; and Kenneth agreed with him. But all the patriotism in his nature was aroused and this, combined with Hester’s inspiration and his naturally adventurous spirit, held him proof against his father’s arguments. This strengthand decision were not lost upon the older man, who, having put forth every argument to keep his son at home, ended the discussion by saying, somewhat abruptly:
“When the call came in ’61 I could not go. I had a father and mother dependent on me. I’m—I’m not dependent on you, Kenneth, and your country needs you. I should have been disappointed in you if you had not wanted to go.”
“Thank you, father,” with a hearty grip of the hand for he thought he understood the personal sacrifice his father was making, though, man-fashion, he said no word.
And so Kenneth used his influence toward the end he had in view, with the good result that when on that twenty-third day of April the President issued his first call for troops, he was given a commission as lieutenant in the crack cavalry troop of Radnor and ordered into the State camp to await developments.
The girls saw the troopers go. They happened to be in the business part of the city that afternoon and were attracted by groups of people standing about and talking excitedly. Further investigation, coupled with the sound of a bugle in the distance, caused them to take refuge on the nearest steps and wait with bated breath for the militia to appear. Electric carshad stopped running, wagons rattled off into the side streets, leaving the main thoroughfare clear, and presently they came—a troop of cavalry followed by a regiment of infantry, the splendid column swinging along to the gay music of the band, whose medley of martial airs wound up suggestively with “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”
The crowd broke into a great spontaneous cheer and cheered and cheered again, shouting until they were hoarse. On the sidewalks, steps, from windows all about, people craned their necks for a last look at the departing soldiers. Women waved their handkerchiefs and wept. Men raised their hats—aye, flung them high in the air—while every man, woman and child who could lay hand on a flag waved it in frantic demonstration. For staid decorous Radnor it was an ovation.
The Dale girls thrilled with excitement. Just as the cavalry passed their steps Julie grabbed Hester and said:
“Look at that officer just back of the men—isn’t he stunning! And see how beautifully he manages that prancing horse! No, not over there, Hester,—this way, nearer us,” excitedly, “the horse is dancing to the music and oh!—why, Hester Dale, it’s Mr. Landor! Wave to him, quick! I want him to see us!”
They both waved, standing on tip-toe, and,as if impelled by the instinct that warns us when those we love are near, he turned and saw them. There was a quick interchange of glances, a slight wave of the hand and he was gone.
“Hedidsee us,” exclaimed Julie. “I am so glad even if it is against the regulations for an officer to recognize people. Oh, aren’t you glad we were down town! It is really living in war times and seeing for ourselves the things Daddy has described a thousand times!”
“I can’t realize it,” said Hester, looking rather flushed, “but I would not have missed it for anything in the world!”
When they got back to the house they found Jack in a fever of impatience waiting to waylay them.
“Did you see him? Did you see him?” he cried, stopping them at his door.
“Mr. Landor? yes,” laughed Julie. “Did you?”
“Where were you? I was down at the Armory. Oh, please stop in here a moment till I tell you about it.”
Thus urged, they went in.
“He was here,” cried Jack, to whom there was only one he, “early this afternoon in his uniform and he asked for you; he wanted to say good-by, but I said you’d just gone out. I saw you both going up the street before hecame—and he could only stay a second ’cause the troops were ordered out and he thought I’d like to get around to the Armory and see them start off. And didn’t I, just! I went lickety-split on my crutches nearly as fast as a boy could run,” he cried, immensely proud of this achievement, “and I was there in time and got a front seat. A fellow on a grocery wagon asked me to sit up with him and I saw—everything,” with a comprehensive sweep of his arms. “The horses and the officers and the men and all their friends crowding around the Armory and hanging on to some of them tight, and some of the ladies crying and gee! but it was great!”
“Well, you certainly were right in it, Jack,” commented Hester.
“Should say I was! And pretty soon out came Mr. Landor—Lieutenant Landor,” corrected Jack with great emphasis, “and an orderly was standing alongside the curb with his horse and before he mounted he saw me sitting in the wagon on the corner of the street and he came down and saluted as though I was his superior officer,” Jack’s eyes were fairly dancing out of his head, “and said good-by all over again. I wish you could have seen the crowd! They just gaped! and the boys nearly had a fit seeing me talking to an officer. And when he went off one of them said, ‘Gee! he’s a corker—he’llknock the spots out of the Spaniards,’ and I said, ‘You bet!’ That’s awful slang, Miss Julie,” apologetically, “but it’s the truth.”
Julie smiled. “We are getting our first glimpse of war, Jack, and it is pretty exciting for all of us.”
“I’m crazy to go—I bet they’d take me for a drummer-boy if I could get rid of these,” with a disgusted glance at his crutches. “I told Mr. Landor so and he said of course I wanted to go—every boy wanted to serve his country—but sometimes there was just as much to do for those who stayed at home as those who went. That the women and children must be looked after” (the air of protection which the superiority of his sex gave him would have been funny had he not been in such deadly earnest), “and,” he continued, “he appointed me a guard of honor. I’m to take care of you!” He made this announcement with positive triumph.
“How splendid!” said Julie, realizing how much this feeling of importance meant to the restless boy who was longing to be off for the front.
“I’m to go and see his father too, and print a weekly bulletin full of what we’re all doing and anything I can make up—just like the one I do for your father and he’s going to write me from camp. Think of that! And I’m to get well asfast as I can and study very hard and try to be a man when he gets back. And what do you suppose? No more office for me!”
“Jack, you are inventing!”
“Nope,” delighted at her incredulity, “he had a talk with mother last week and I’m to go to school and then to college.”
“That is the best news I’ve heard for many a day,” said Julie, affectionately regarding the happy boy. “If you work hard and go to college I prophesy great things for you.”
“If the war’s still on, though, when I’m old enough and well enough, maybe I’d get to be a drummer-boy.” In his present state of military ardor life held the promise of nothing greater than that.
When they had left him and were nearly at their own door they were stopped by the sound of his crutches on the stairs below. Hester ran back to see what he wanted.
“Don’t come up, Jack,” she called, running down to meet him. “Did we leave something behind?”
“It’s this, Miss Hester,” reaching out a note. “He gave it to me—I nearly forgot. Please forgive me,” penitently.
“Of course, Jack,” taking it from him and turning again she went upstairs.
It was only a thin sheet of paper, foldedthree-cornered, on which in pencil was scrawled her name. But she opened it on the stairs with a mixture of curiosity and tenderness which she would have been at a loss to define had any analysis of her feelings been required of her.
“I had hoped to see you,” it said, without any other beginning, “but that failing, I have stolen a moment here at the Armory to say good-bye. It was not a friend but I, myself, to whom you were such a help and inspiration that evening. When I come back will you let me thank you for that and—more? The bit of gold you gave me I am carrying with me as a mascot. Do you mind? And if I prove as fearless and brave a soldier as you I shall thank God for making me of the right stuff. Will you pray that it may be so? Good-bye.”
She stood quite still for a moment when she had finished reading, then brushed her hand quickly over her eyes and went on into their apartment. Finding Julie she handed her the bit of paper and said gayly, though Julie thought there was a suspicious huskiness in her voice, “See, Julie dear, a note from a really, truly soldier.” And before Julie could speak she whisked out of the room and until Bridget called her to dinner, was seen no more.
A month passed, during which, in spite of the excitement over war and the subsequent depression along certain lines of business, their work increased from day to day. And in the midst ofall this bustle and rush when each hour exacted of them the very limit of their endurance, Mr. Dale died. He went to sleep with God as peacefully as a little child. At first the girls could not believe it. They had grown so used to the long hours in which he slept, so accustomed to the paralysis which kept his mind and body apathetic, that they could not conceive that he would not wake again and turn his eyes fondly on them as before. When finally he was carried out of the little home and laid in his last resting place they began to realize that God had released him from his earthly thraldom and given them another saint in heaven. With characteristic courage they lived through those first days when the awful loneliness pressed so heavily upon them, and with characteristic determination took up their work struggling to go on as if nothing had happened. But it was hard—harder than any other sorrow which had come to them—for the whole incentive of their work was gone. It was as if the very mainspring of their lives had snapped and broken.
In the long solemn talks the girls had together at this time Julie urged that they must be as faithful to their father’s precepts as they had tried to be while he was with them. And she dwelt very much on the fact that he was still with them, guiding and loving them as much as during allthose years before he was stricken down. And Hester believed this too for they had been taught the beauty of the inner, spiritual life that counts for immortality and makes all separation merely a transitory thing bridged over by love. So they felt their beloved father still with them, though Hester often brokenly whispered that working was robbed of its incentive now that they were no longer “making a home for Dad.”
It must not be supposed that they were left alone in their affliction. On the contrary, friends sprang up in every direction. Women whom hitherto they had only regarded as customers and known most formally, now came forward with kindest words and thoughtful suggestions, while expressions of sympathy in the form of cards and flowers threatened to well-nigh deluge them. It was evident to the most casual observer that “those Dale girls” were persons of considerable importance. Unique as it was, they had made their place in Radnor, and the fact was given wide recognition. They themselves were fairly bewildered and overcome by so much demonstration from people from whom they expected nothing. That they were not insensible to its meaning was shown in their grateful appreciation of every word and act. Even the haughty Miss Davis, desiring to make reparation, chose this time to come and see them,and Hester out of the fullness of her sorrowful heart accepted her repentant kiss and fell to talking of childish days.
Next to Dr. Ware there was no one so keenly conscious of or who so rejoiced over this capitulation of exclusive Radnor as the Lennoxes. As Mrs. Lennox wrote Kenneth Landor, most girls were what their position made them, but they had made their own position, winning the respect and admiration and at last the friendship of every one who knew them. He, hard at work drilling raw recruits in Virginia (for his troop had been ordered into a Southern camp) found time to write how glad of this he was and to the girls he sent a joint note of deepest sympathy.
The Driscoes wrote, of course, each in their own way. The girls half smiled over Cousin Nancy’s letter—it was such a mixture of a belief in the retribution that overtakes the willful and an evident grief that the Major was no more. Colonel Driscoe wrote little but did much which developed later through Dr. Ware who unwarily let the cat out of the bag. And Dr. Ware, as might have been expected, did everything. This time the girls allowed him to plan and arrange and perform with them and for them the last loving offices for their father, feeling that it was his right.
Miss Ware was at this time in England and as the Doctor was living at his club, his time was more than ever at their disposal. Miss Ware had taken flight at this first note of war, indeed before the bugle sounded, for she had a very indifferent regard for her country and at all times preferred England. So the Doctor came and went without comment, and a month after Mr. Dale’s death he was summoned hastily one morning by Bridget.
Julie lay ill. He could not find that she was in any great pain and he had not expected that she would be. He knew immediately that the thing he had been so long dreading had taken place. Her tired nerves refused to do their work at last—the delicate mechanism of her body had stopped.
Hester hovered about, wide-eyed and solicitous and then it was that more than ever Dr. Ware took things into his own hands and said a few things to Hester which caused that young woman to gasp with astonishment and fling her arms about his neck in her usual impetuous fashion.
Under the most favorable auspices a military camp entails labor, but to the volunteers who assembled in Virginia that spring and broke ground for what afterward became known as Camp Alger, it was a tremendous undertaking. The hewing of wood and clearing of underbrush which it entailed was scarcely bargained for by the enlisted man fresh from civilian life, who, nevertheless, went at it with the energy characteristic of Uncle Sam’s boys the country over, as a result of which, by the end of May, many of the regiments were as well quartered as if they were enjoying the customary summer outing at their State camp-grounds at home. These, of course, were the militia now mustered into the United States service and awaiting orders to follow the regulars into Spanish territory.
Troop D of Kenneth Landor’s squadron had unquestionably the finest site on the reservation; a wooded knoll stretching down into a field of grass—green when the troopers came but worn down to bare earth in the first month of their encampment. Beneath the shade trees on the hillsidethe officers pitched their conical tents, the men stretching out through the field below in two troop streets, back of which on either side were picketed their horses.
It was a warm June afternoon, but a little breeze stirred the branches of the trees and blew with delicious freshness over the knoll, on which, stretched out at full length, lay Kenneth Landor. It was an off hour in camp and, barring the sentries who were tramping up and down their posts, every man was taking advantage of it, some comfortably lounging like Kenneth on the grass, others laboriously writing home letters filled with their latest exploit. For they were just back from a three days’ practice march along the Potomac, during which they had spent their time in fighting the infantry they met on the road and swimming their horses in the river; and this first bit of mimic warfare could not fail to be of interest to the home people.
Kenneth had enjoyed the march hugely. He liked action and chafed, as did all the men, under the monotony of their enforced encampment, although realizing full well that the troop would be sent to the front as soon as was deemed expedient. He was thinking, as he lay on his back gazing skyward, of what he had once heard a veteran say,—that war was largely made up of soldier housekeeping. That might be true,but he hoped he should come in for some stiff fighting before he got through. These interesting speculations so engrossed him that he scarcely noticed the mail orderly going the rounds until turning suddenly on his elbow he saw the man coming toward him. This trooper, detailed as mail orderly, was no other than Charley Bemis, whom we last saw at the Earle-Truxton wedding, but so strictly was the etiquette of military life maintained in camp that the man on approaching, saluted his superior officer, received an acknowledging salute, delivered a letter and turned away without a word.
The envelope was addressed in Jack’s round sprawling hand and Kenneth prepared himself for a comfortable perusal of the weekly bulletin which the boy wrote, edited and printed with faithful regularity and which never failed to be of absorbing interest to the man who received it. This time, however, there was no printed sheet, but a letter written apparently at fever heat.
“Dear Lieutenant,” (it began, with military terseness), “I’m too upset to do the paper, though I’ll try to soon, but you won’t wonder when I tell you.They’re gone!I can’t realize it myself and I wish I didn’t have to—it’s all so sudden and so lonesome I just want to go off and die!
“Dr. Ware did it. He and Bridget packed them off before they could say Jack Robinson. She’s gone, too, so has he—down to Wavertree Hall, their cousin’s plantation in Virginia. You see, Miss Julie broke down, though she wouldn’t let any of us say she was ill, and Mrs. Driscoe urged themto come there and Colonel Driscoe wrote Dr. Ware and sent him the money to buy their tickets and said he mustn’t tell and he should rely upon him to get them off. Miss Hester told me all that. She laughed, the way she always does, you know, and said their cousin Driscoe and Dr. Ware together were too much for them. She said they meant to have a good rest and get Miss Julie strong and then come back to their work again but Gee! I wish they didn’t have to—it’s such a fearful grind.
“It’s awful without them, and Peter Snooks gone too! Lieutenant Landor, what’s a guard of honor to do with nothing to guard? There’s mother, of course, and Mr. Landor, but they don’t like me bothering around the way those girls did. They never minded. I’ve left off my crutches and I’m digging at my books, but I’m going to be a drummer boy yet, you bet!
“Please send me the latest news from the front. I think it’sgreatto be a soldier!
“Jack.”
“P.S.—Mother says it’s a girl’s trick to add a postscript, but they’re down there near you somewhere. Wouldn’t you love to see them, just! They went to Dunn Loring the way you did and had to drive a ways into the country. Thought you’d like to know.”
The varied sensations which surged through Kenneth as he finished reading are difficult to describe. Paramount was the joyful surprise that Hester was somewhere in the vicinity, followed by the overwhelming desire to see her without loss of time. This he knew as he came to think it over quietly, was impossible. He could not take the initiative or seem to thrust himself upon her uninvited. She, of course, must know that his troop was still at Camp Alger and if she cared to see him—but did she care?
That baffling question haunted him a week. Then came one day a note brought by a small darky who was inclined to ride rough-shod over the sentries because, as he condescended to explain to them, he had a note from the young missis to deliver right into the Lieutenant’s own hand. A formal, brief little note Hester had written, but it was enough, for it told him where they were and that their cousin Mrs. Driscoe would be most happy to have him ride over and call.
He went that evening, inquiring the way in Dunn Loring and soon found himself riding up a long avenue between rows of locust trees, at the end of which he could just distinguish a large brick mansion with a square portico and broad verandahs at either end. When he drew up at the house he discovered a small cavalcade ahead of him. At least half a dozen horses were standing hitched in various parts of the driveway, and following the custom of the place he tied his own with the rest. Then he rapped vigorously at the knocker to announce his arrival. By that general factotum George Washington he was ushered immediately across a huge square hall and out onto a verandah where a gay group of people were laughing and chatting together. His first impression was a vivid effect of blue uniforms and white muslin gowns while from out of this medley a dignified, matronly figure cameforward with his card in her hand and said in hearty Southern fashion:
“How do you do, Mr. Landor? It is a pleasure to welcome you to Wavertree Hall. Hester, my dear, here is one of your Radnor friends.”
Hester slipped down from the railing where she had been sitting and shyly gave him her hand. Somehow, for a moment he scarcely knew her with that strange light in her eyes. Then there was a general interchange of greetings, for Julie called him over to the hammock where she was half reclining and Dr. Ware rose up from his seat beside her and nearly shook the arm off him; and there was dear little Nannie waiting to have him presented and the Colonel, who laughingly consented to wait his turn, and all the guests who enviously regarded this brother officer upon whom, for the moment, all interest centered.
He saw very little of Hester that night. She was the gayest of the gay and seemed to evade him with the old elusiveness which had been so marked in the first days of their acquaintance. So he turned for comfort to Julie, whose convalescence kept her a little apart from the lively group and whose genuine interest in him seemed to the distracted fellow almost the sweetest thing in the world.
He rode off rather early, in company with theother officers, whom he found belonged to a Virginia regiment encamped at Alger, and when the gay little cavalcade had waved their hands in parting and were lost to sight Dr. Ware said to Julie:
“There was not a man of them who could compare with Kenneth—he is superb!”
“Yes,” she assented, “he is. I never saw him look so handsome as he does in his uniform.”
The others had strayed into the great hall, and they were alone on the verandah.
“Julie,” he said gently, “you begin to feel more like your old self now, do you not, dear?”
“Oh! yes,” she said, “I feel stronger and stronger every day. But,” with a little laugh, “I am in danger of being spoiled—you all wait on me so.”
“It is a good thing to get that independent young spirit of yours into subjection,” he laughed. “We are all making the most of the opportunity.”
“Do you notice how cousin Nancy has changed?” she asked. “She does not eye Hester and me so curiously as she did at first. When we came she scarcely took her eyes off us for days. I think she was prepared to see freaks and could not readjust her mind to the fact that we looked and behaved just as usual. To cook fora living and still be a lady was an anomaly beyond her comprehension, but she is beginning to realize such things can be, though she wouldn’t acknowledge it for the world. Dear cousin Nancy! She’s so good and so contradictory!”
“I shall never forget her kindness in keeping me here,” he said heartily. “Think of my merely meaning to see you safe at Wavertree Hall, and being taken possession of by her and made one of the family! Her hospitality is unbounded.”
Presently he said: “I have been waiting for you to feel strong enough to have a little serious talk, Julie. What would you say if you were not to go back to your work for another year?”
“Oh, we must go back,” she said. “Please don’t think we’ll allow ourselves to get demoralized or unfitted for work because of all this!”
“I’m not likely to think that, dear, but your cousin Driscoe has had a long talk with me and he urges me to persuade you all to remain with them a year, at least. He says now they’ve got you here they want to keep you and you’ll be all the better fitted to work, he thinks, for a long rest. He says he has not mentioned this to your cousin Nancy because he will not have her bothering you to do what you don’t want to—”
“The dear, blessed man,” she exclaimed.
“And he didn’t want to bother you himselfbut he thought if I threw the weight of my influence on his side you might be persuaded. He doesn’t know, does he?” wistfully, “what little influence I really have with you two independent girls!”
“Oh, don’t say that!” she protested; “it isn’t fair! And I do not believe way down deep in your heart you would urge our staying on here so long. You know too well how hard we have struggled to get started to advise our letting the work all slip away. Besides, what would you do without us all that time, I’d like to know,” she said playfully. “You’d be terribly lonesome, you know you would and—oh no,” suddenly growing serious again, “we must go back and take up the work and push on with it, but it isn’t the same—it just can’t be without Daddy!” She turned her face away but not before he had detected the brimming eyes.
“Dear,” he said, putting out his arms, “if only you would let me”—he stopped, pulling himself together with a mighty effort. “I—I—”
“You are so good to me,” she faltered, “so good!”
“I’m far from good to let you get excited to-night,” he said, struggling to speak calmly. “You are not strong yet, dear, but I wanted to speak to you about your cousin Driscoe’s proposition before I went away!”
“Away?” she repeated as if scarcely understanding, “must you go away?”
“I think so, dear, in a day or two. Tell me what I can do for you in Radnor.”
“Radnor?” musingly, “how far away that seems! Yes, you can do something for me there—two things. See Jack and tell him all about us and hunt up Mr. Renshawe and tell him we’ve nearly won the day. Hester and I have been maneuvering in his behalf on all occasions. Tell him Nannie treads on air and that any day he may expect a little flag of truce, for cousin Nancy shows signs of surrendering. Will you tell him all that?”
“Julie dear,” bending toward her with a world of tenderness in his voice, “Julie dear, do you never want anything for yourself?”
“Yes,” very faintly.
“Can you tell me, little girl?”
“Yes,” reaching out her hands with a little childish gesture,—“you.”
“Julie!”
He took her in his arms and for a moment there was silence while out in the moonlit trees a mocking-bird called to its mate.
“My little girl,” he said at last tremulously, “is it really true?”
“Oh, how could I do it,” she whispered, “how could I!”
“Love me? I am sure I don’t know and I scarcely dare believe it. Look at me, sweetheart and tell me it is true.”
She raised her beautiful honest eyes and let him look into the depths of her pure soul. “It is so natural to love you and so beautiful,” she said simply.
“But I am no longer a young man, dear. What right have I to ask you to give your young life to me?”
“You didn’t ask me,” with a little fluttering laugh, “I asked you. It is very humiliating for you to remind me of it.”
“Julie!” He was holding her fast as if he never meant to let her go.
“You are not old,” she protested. “It is not years but the spirit that counts, and you are young—just as I am old for my years, and there is no one like you but Hester in the world. I have been loving you so long unconsciously, that I don’t know when it began.”
“Neither do I, dear.”
“But I knew you so well,” she continued, “I was afraid you would have some mistaken sense of honor that would prevent your ever telling me you loved me and I just couldn’t bear that.” Julie’s head was hidden on his shoulder.
“You little saint,” stroking her hair tenderly, “you always seemed to belong to me, as if youwere a part of my very life, but I have never felt I was worthy of such a blessing and I have reminded myself a thousand times this past winter that I could only have one place in your affections—the old family friend. When Monsieur Grémond came along I realized more than ever that I had no right to daydreams—that some other man would claim you and carry you away.”
“Did you want me to marry him?” she asked.
“I wanted your happiness above everything.”
“Doyounever want anything for yourself?” she asked saucily.
“You,” was his answer, at which they both laughed with the delicious sense of their own humor which only lovers know.
Then they had a long quiet talk together about the future, and he told her how he thanked God she was willing to give herself into his keeping; how he wanted to flood her life with sunshine and how blessed he should be if she and Hester would make for him such a home as they had made for Dad. And they spoke long and tenderly of the man who had been as noble a friend as a father and who would always be a loved memory to them both. Then she slipped away from him and leaving him to dream of a reality that was beyond all imagining, went up to her room in search of Hester.
The change to Virginia was perhaps appreciated by no one more than Peter Snooks, that by no means unimportant member of the Dale family, whose activity knew no bounds. He raced madly about the plantation, to the consternation of the chickens and the terror of Mrs. Driscoe, who, never having owned dogs, fancied he was going to take up everything by the roots. But Peter Snooks behaved admirably. To be sure, he chased chickens, but what canine could resist that temptation? And it was recorded to his credit that he never hurt one of them. With Julie not well and Bridget and the two younger girls scarcely leaving her, Peter Snooks was forced to seek companionship out of the family—quite a new order of things—and chose George Washington, greatly to the delight of that ebony mite. What games they had out in the carriage-house and what antics the two cut upon the lawn playing circus for the edification of the people on the verandah! Hester herself was sometimes inspired to go into the ring and put Snooks through his tricks, which weremany, herself performing some ridiculous caper which was received with wild applause. But Snooks had the best time when Hester and Nannie went riding, and he raced alongside and often way ahead, to his own evident delight though not always to the comfort of the horses.
Nannie, these days, was the happiest girl in the County, for she had her two cousins whom she adored and every prospect of a speedy adjustment of her love affair. She nearly hugged Julie to death whenever she thought of it and confided to Hester when they went off together that being engaged was just the loveliest thing in the world.
It would have been impossible to find two girls in greater contrast than Hester and Nannie, for all they were such chums. Nannie, in her white frocks and big sun hats, was a sweet little maiden whose soft brown eyes did not belie her disposition. She had a soft, drawling voice and dear little clinging ways that made the Colonel’s sobriquet of “Puss” seem most fitting. She was fast growing to womanhood, but was in all things childishly appealing, though that she was not without character was shown in various ways, culminating in her loyalty to Sidney Renshawe in spite of the painful opposition.
Hester wore white muslin frocks and big hats, too—relics of their last year’s Paris shopping. It had always been the avowed wish of theirfather that in the event of his dying before them they should not wear black. He had the strongest aversion to the garb of mourning and the girls remembered and respected his wishes. So they had made no change in their wardrobe, though since they had come down to Virginia they confined themselves almost wholly to white.
Simple enough these frocks were, but Hester wore hers with an air that gave them something of her personality and made her distinctive wherever she appeared. There was never anything nondescript about Hester. And her moods were so many and so varied that her cousin Nancy, who did not in the least understand her, told the Colonel despairingly that she must be a witch—there certainly was not a drop of Fairleigh blood in her. Julie, forced to be quiet through indisposition, was regarded by her cousin as really quite patrician and not in the least—and this was a wonderful admission—not in the least vulgarized by work. Colonel Driscoe agreed to her last statement and let the rest go. He found that the simplest way to avoid argument.
Kenneth Landor became a frequent caller and grew to be an immense favorite with the household, but he seldom had the satisfaction of more than a few words with Hester. One morning he rode over and deemed the Fates more than kindwhen, finding Julie on the porch, she sent him down into the garden, where she said he would find Hester helping George Washington pick blackberries.
His first glimpse of her was a sun-bonnet; then two sadly stained hands reaching up among the bushes, then a white figure in sharp relief against the green; then Peter Snooks barked and she turned and saw him.
“Good morning,” she said sweetly, from out of her sun-bonnet, giving him a look that seemed propitious. “Have a blackberry?”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do. May I help pick?”
“If you like. I can’t stop, you know, for old Aunt Rachael is expecting them for dinner. We’re great cronies, she and I. I steal out to the kitchen quarters often to see her when Cousin Nancy is not looking.”
“Do you mind pushing back that sun-bonnet?” he asked beseechingly. “I know you’re inside of it somewhere and I should like to see you.”
She laughed and pushed it half way back. “If that does not suit you I’ll take it off altogether.”
“Oh, don’t do that, it’s so—so nice,” not daring to say how adorable he thought she was in it. “I like it the way you have it now. Inever knew sun-bonnets could be so frilled and furbelowed.”
“It is Nannie’s—she is making Julie and me each one. She says they are a fad this year. They are pretty, aren’t they? But somehow they feel hot and then I just tie the strings loose and let it hang down my back like that. Cousin Nancy says a girl who will do that has absolutely no regard for her complexion. It would be funny, wouldn’t it, if I took to worrying about things like that? Why, where is George Washington? Gone? And you’re shockingly lazy! You haven’t picked a berry since you came!”
“I—I beg your pardon,” scarcely able to take his eyes off her, “I really mean to help.”
“How is Captain Loomis?” she asked, seeing that he seemed unable to do much of anything but stare at her. “Have you seen him to-day?”
“That little Virginian? He haunts our camp and talks to me by the hour about you! He is madly in love with you.”
“He is too silly to be anything else,” munching a berry.
“I do not like your way of putting it.”
“I mean,” she explained, swinging her sun-bonnet by one string, “that he does not know how to be sensible and I do not like him well enough to bother to teach him, so, as he isaround a good deal I have to politely put up with him. I should think you knew me well enough by this time to know how I hate silly people.”
“Do you ever politely put up with me?”
“Sometimes,” teasingly.
“Hester, Hester,” called a fresh young voice, “are you down there? Come up out of the garden quick! It’s so cool this morning father says he’ll take us over to camp to see that fascinating Mr. Landor.”
Hester ducked her head in her sunbonnet and fled.
When she reappeared half an hour later she was in her riding habit, looking so trig and tailor-made and altogether conventional that Kenneth wondered if she could be the same mischievous sprite who had run away from him in the garden.
It was arranged that Landor should escort them over, and the adroit Hester managed that he should start off in advance with Nannie, she and the Colonel bringing up the rear. Julie and Mrs. Driscoe waved them off, then returned to their work of sewing for the soldiers. For Mrs. Driscoe was the president of a ladies’ patriotic aid society and found plenty for herself and the girls to do.
Hester looked forward with eagerness to reaching CampAlger, which, though only six miles distant from Wavertree Hall, they had not yet visited. She rode along at first chatting gayly to the Colonel but at last was forced to keep her mouth closed on account of the dust. And who that experienced it, will ever forget the dust of that June in Virginia! Inches deep on the roads it lay in a thick brown powder which, at the slightest disturbance from man or beast, rose in choking waves, covering and submerging everything; while in the immediate vicinity of Alger, where the sentries warned every one that a gait other than a walk was not permitted in and about the camp, it smothered them to the verge of suffocation.
They approached their destination by way of the little village of Falls Church, where over the rough and winding road traveled a constant procession. It was said by the darkies in Virginia that spring, that all the “poor white trash” in Fairfax County had abandoned their farms and taken to “toting” people to Camp Alger. Vehicles of every description were going back and forth carrying people from the station to the camp, sometimes officers, sometimes soldiers, often visitors; in every case the seating capacity of buggy, carryall or wagon was stretched to its utmost capacity. Intermingled with this motley array were the army wagons loaded with campprovisions and paraphernalia, on the top of which usually perched two or more soldiers. These, drawn by four mules and driven by an antiquated darky, seemed to Hester the most interesting thing on the road, though possibly she made an exception in favor of the mounted orderlies flashing in and out through the crowd or an occasional mounted officer who saluted Kenneth and stared at the girls in open admiration.
As they crossed the picket lines, the camp lay before them—row after row of tents (reminding Hester of the card houses she used to build when she was little) not “gleaming white” like the tents of story but brown with the dust. Desiring to show them about before dismounting Kenneth took them on by his troop and through the roads leading by the various regiments. Of the thirty thousand men, more than half were encamped in the fields, now resembling arid plains, so destitute were they of vegetation; while the rest, more fortunate, were scattered through the surrounding woods, lost to sight except for the flutter of a flag above the trees.