“No, I believe him to be an American.”
“It can’t be, then, for he looks too young for our other war. Didn’t he tell you what battles?”
“No, he never told me, nor did any of his friends.”
“Then how the ——, I beg ten thousand pardons, miss, but how can you know he was in them?”
“Because it is my privilege to be a Private in the same Army. I said our Army was the one in which he had gained promotion; and It’s peculiarity is, that It will receive as recruits both women and children.”
Impossible as it may appear to you, he fixed his eyes upon me with an air of bewilderment, and remained perfectly silent. I continued:
“Although I am not eligible for promotion as he is, but must remain a Private always, I have had some of the same battles to fight, and——”
“Psha! you’ve been fooling me all this time, and I never saw it.”
I smiled. “Not fooling,” I said, “but answering a question you asked the other day. Have you forgotten when you said ‘Little you know of battles!’ that I replied, ‘And yet, maybe, I have fought harder ones than you ever did?’ You then asked me what under the sun I could mean? I promised to tell you, and I have only done so in a round-about way. Have you forgotten one thing more? What was it I asked you to give up, when you said you had rather be shot?”
His color rose, but he said nothing.