“Oh, Miss Smith,” he went on, “I wish I had a ba-ba-badge like yours. Couldn’t you give it to me?”
Thinking to escape his effusions and to hasten his exit, I took off my precious Lincoln mourning badge and handed it to him. But he grew more persistent, saying:
“Wouldn’t you just pin-pin it on?”
In silent indignation and protest I did so, to his great satisfaction. Then as his speech grew more indistinct, he added: “W-w-when I tell the ferrers that M-Miss Smith put-put that on, they’ll all be ravin’ jealous!”
I do not remember how at last I got him out of the little house. I saw his orderly help him to mount a superb horse that had impatiently pawed the ground since he entered.
My indignation passed for little above the shouts of laughter at my discomfiture that for once I was caught in a dilemma.
But this recalcitrant young officer received a startling communication on the following day which, doubtless, caused a permanent revulsion of admiration.
The wife of an officer, with her four year old girl, was very anxious to join her husband at the front. Knowing that I held a pass, she persuaded me to take her to the camp, which might have made me considerable trouble, as she could not get permission from Headquarters. Being willing to help her, if possible, I sent for an ambulance and driver, and we started over the corduroy roads, ditches, ruts and mud,—a foot deep in some places,—occasionally in danger of being overturned, as we rode at times partly on one wheel or two, rarely on four. In a sudden lurch this mother so lost her head with fright that she raised her feet and shot out on one side into the “Sacred Soil” of Virginia, quite up to her knees. I grasped the child and flung myself with her on the opposite side, thus righting the ambulance, and feeling little sympathy for the mother who forgot her child, though her feet were completely covered with mud. We found her husband in camp, and I left them quite happy in their tent before Petersburg.
One of our surgeons owned a superb black horse that was so intelligent, one could not pass him without petting him. This he greatly enjoyed, and he showed that he remembered me. His handsome owner remarked, “I’m soon going to take you for a ride on him.”
“O, you are, indeed. I believe it takes two to make an engagement, and I have reasons for not wishing to ride with you,” I replied. “Good morning!” and so I left him greatly incensed.