“I’ll write better to-morrow, Berry, I know I will,” Mollie faltered, as clasping her shabby, beloved doll, she started to join Mrs. Arnold, who had offered to walk as far as the brook with her.
“I don’t care how you write,” Berry had carelessly responded, her eyes anxiously following Lily, and eager for Mollie to go that she might hear whatever Lily could tell her.
Mollie gave a little sob as she turned and followed Mrs. Arnold down the path. She decided that she must be so stupid that Berry no longer cared to teach her. It was the first time Berry had ever spoken unkindly to the little mountain girl. Mrs. Arnold was quick to notice Mollie’s trouble and comforted the little girl by saying that Berry was anxious about Lily; and when she added, “I have a skirt for your mother in this package, Mollie,” the little girl’s eyes brightened happily; for Mollie’s chief sorrow was that her mother had nothing for herself. Whatever Mollie had she was eager to share with her mother. Mrs. Arnold knew this, and it made her very tender toward the little girl.
CHAPTER XV
SOLDIERS ON SHILOH RIDGE
Berry had not realized that her words would hurt Mollie’s sensitive nature; indeed she hardly remembered what she had said, for her thoughts were full of marching armies; of sleeping soldiers suddenly attacked by relentless foes; and of herself, as a swift-footed messenger, reaching the Union camp in time to warn and save them. She went about the cabin after her mother’s departure repeating a verse from a poem she had learned that winter, a poem by Sir Walter Scott:
“‘Down from the hill the maiden pass’d,
At the wild show of war aghast,—
O gay, yet fearful to behold,
Flashing with steel and rough with gold,
And bristled o’er with swords and spears,
With plumes and pennons waving fair,
Was that bright battle-front——’”
“My lan’, Missie Berry!” exclaimed the admiring Lily, “does yo’ reckon we’s gwine ter see all dat?”
And at Lily’s question Berry quickly remembered that she should be off to Shiloh and keep watch. The little girl realized from her father’s anxious face, and from what he said of the probable advance of Confederate troops, that any hour might see them on the march.
“I don’t know, Lily,” she responded gravely, “but I’m sure we ought to keep watch all the time; and I’m going up the ridge now.”
“I bin a projectin’, Missie Berry, ’bout yo’ Ma tellin’ me to stay clus in dis cabin in de mawnin’s. Co’rse I mus’ min’ her,” said Lily, “so I jes’ wonner if I hadn’ better keep a watch out at night. Dar ain’ no reason w’y dose sojers wouldn’ come a-creepin’ fru de woods at night!” And Lily rolled her eyes and nodded her head solemnly.