It was Lucy Maria who opened the door. The other girls came soon after; and when Tommy was asleep Aunt Phebe came too. We had a very sociable time. I don’t call myself a talker, but I didn’t mind talking there, they seemed so easy, just like one’s own folks. I told grandmother many things about the contrabands, and about Southern life, and Southern people, and about soldier life and battles and rations and making raids, and the Washington hospitals, and how needy the contrabands were, and about my barrel. “Poor creatures!” said she. “I must look up some things for them to-morrow.” Aunt Phebe thought there might be a good many things lying about that would be of use to folks who hadn’t anything.
“Billy’s boots!” cried Hannah Jane.
“Why, yes,” said her mother, “no use keeping boots for a growing boy.”
This and other remarks brought us back to William Henry again, and grandmother seemed glad of it. She liked to keep talking about her boy.
“I shall feel very anxious,” she said. “I hope he will write soon as he gets there. I told him he’d better write every day, so I could be sure just how he was. For if well one day, he mightn’t be the next.”
“O grandmother, that’s too bad!” said Lucy Maria. “’T is cruel to ask a boy to write every day!”
“I wouldn’t worry, mother,” said Aunt Phebe. “Billy’s always been a well child.”
“These strong constitutions,” said grandmother, “when they do take anything, ’t is apt to go hard with ’em.”
“He’s taken pretty much everything that can be given to him already,” said Aunt Phebe.
“I suppose they’ll put clothes enough on his bed,” said grandmother. “I can’t bear to think of his sleeping cold nights.”