Dad looked down at the cut made by the Confederate captain’s saber when, in the early stages of the encounter, it had grazed his upper arm.
“That’s so!” he admitted shamefacedly. “I never noticed it. It was shiftless of me. I’ll get it mended as soon as I go back to camp. You aren’t ashamed to be seen walking with a man who’s got a torn coat, are you, Emily?” he finished anxiously. “Because—”
She interrupted him with another exclamation as she looked more keenly at the rent.
“And the shoulder of your shirt, right under it, is torn, too,” she said. “How could you ever get both of them torn like that and never know it?”
She stood still, disengaged her arm from his, and, with the air of a dressmaking expert, drew the sides of the coat’s rent together.
“Why, this isn’t a tear,” she went on, “it’s a cut! A clean cut! How ever did you do it?”
She loosed her hold on the sides of the cut and the released sections of cloth opened again.
So did the cut shirt-sleeve beneath them, revealing the angry red welt, like a whiplash mark, on the hard, bronzed flesh of Dad’s upper arm.
“James Brinton!” she accused sternly. “You’ve been fighting again!”
“Yessum!” he confessed, hanging his head.