r cross-grained
Orderly-Sergeant aroused them with profane threats of extra duty.

Instead, after peeping cautiously through the door to see that they were
awake, the girls would come in with merry greeting, bowls of warm water,
and soft, white towels fragrant of the lawn. Maria would devote herself
to helping Shorty get ready for breakfast, and Amanda to Si.
Shorty trembled like a captured rabbit when Maria first began her
ministrations. All his blood rushed to his face, and he tried to
mumble something about being able to take care of himself, which that
straightforward young woman paid not the slightest attention to. After
his first fright was over there was a thrilling delight about the
operation which electrified him.

When the boys were properly washed and combed, Mrs. Klegg, her kind,
motherly face beaming with consciousness of good and acceptable service,
would enter with a large tray, laden with fragrant coffee,
delicious cream, golden butter, her own peerless bread and bits of
daintily-broiled chicken.

"Si," said Shorty, one morning after he had finished the best breakfast
he had ever known, the girls had gone away with the things, and he
was leaning back thinking it all over in measureless content, "if the
preachers'd preach that a feller'd go to such a place as this when
he died if he was real good, how good we'd all be, and we'd be rather
anxious to die. How in the world are we ever goin' to git up spunk
enough to leave this and go back to the field?"

"You'll git tired o' this soon enough," said Si. "It's awful nice for
a change, but I don't want it to last long. I want to be able to git up
and git out. I hate awfully to have women-folks putterin' around me."

The boys could not help rapidly recovering under such favorable
conditions, and soon they were able to sit up most of the day. In the
evening, ensconced in the big Shaker rocking chairs, sitting on pillows,
and carefully swathed in blankets, they would sit on either side of
the bright fire, with the family and neighbors forming the semi-circle
between, and talk over the war interminably. The neighbors all had sons
and brothers in the army, either in the 200th Ind. or elsewhere, and
were hungry for every detail of army news. They plied Si and Shorty with
questions until the boys' heads ached. Then the Deacon would help out
with his observations of camp-life.

"I'm not goin' to believe," said one good old brother, who was an
exhorter in the Met