tie Fleming hanging on his arm, her eyes drinking him in
with every glance. The governor was in no position to make a row about
this. The occasion had caused an armistice to be signed as to all our
neighborhood quarrels, and Bob Wade was emancipated from the stern
paternal control, as Jack had been when he went off with the first
flight in the original seventy-five thousand--emancipated by the
uniform. Bob and Kittie sailed along in the face and eyes of the
governor and his wife in spite of the fact that such association was
forbidden--and sailed down to Waterloo where they were married before we
went off hurrahing for the cause.

Virginia was there with the elder and grandma. The old preacher and his
wife looked more shabby than I had ever seen them, grandma's gloves more
extensively darned, the elder's clothes shinier, his cuffs in all their
whiteness more frayed, and there were beautifully darned places in the
stiff starched bosom of his shirt. He pressed my hand warmly as he said,
"God bless you, Jacob, and bring you safe back to us, my boy!" Grandma's
eyes glistened as she echoed his sentiments and began asking me about my
underwear and especially my socks. Virginia looked the other way; but
when I went off by myself, Will Lockwood came and drew me away into a
corner to talk with me about old times along the canal; and suddenly we
found Virginia there, and Will all at once thought of some one he wanted
to speak to and left us together.

"I didn't mean that I thought you ought not to go to the war, Teunis,"
said she. "You must go, of course."

"Maybe your friends," I said after standing dumb for a while, "will be
on the Union side."

"No," said she. "I have no relations--and few friends there; but all I
have will be on the other side, I reckon. It makes no difference.
They've forgotten me by this time. Everybody has forgotten me that once
liked me--everybody but Elder Thorndyke and Mrs. Thorndyke. They love
me, but nobody else does."

"I thought some others acted as if they did," I said.

"You thought a lot about it!" she scoffed. Then we sat quite a while
silent. "I shall think every day," said she at last, "about the only
happy time I have had since Ann took sick--and long before that. The
only happy time, and the happiest, I reckon, that I ever'll have. I'll
think of it every day while you're at the front. I want you to know when
you are suffering and in danger that some one thinks of the kindest
thing you