They fished out Amanda Jane’s music-books, and went through “Juanita,” and the “Evergreen Waltz,” and “Beautiful Isle of the Sea;” and, finding a lot of war songs, severally and jointly announced their determination to invade Dixie Land, and to annihilate Rebel Hordes; and adjured each other to remember Sumter and Baltimore, and many other matters that could have made but slight impression on their young minds twenty odd years before. Mrs. Poinsett, in the kitchen, stopped nagging her aid, and thought of young John Tarbox Poinsett’s name on a great sheet of paper in the Gloucester post-office, one morning at the end of April, 1862, when the news came up that Farragut had passed the forts.
The squall was going over, much as it had come, only no one paid attention to its movements now, for the sun was out, trying to straighten up the crushed grass and flowers, and to brighten the hurrying waves, and to soothe the rustling agitation of the poplars.
They must have one more song. Miss Rittenhouse chose “Jeannette and Jeannot,” and when she looked back at him with a delicious coy mischief in her eyes, and sang,—
“There is no one left to love me now,
And you too may forget”—
Horace felt something flaming in his cheeks and choking in his breast, and it was hard for him to keep from snatching those hands from the keys and telling her she knew better.
But he was man enough not to. He controlled himself, and made himself very pleasant to Mrs. Poinsett about not staying to supper, and they set out for the hotel.
The air was cool and damp after the rain.
“You’ve been singing,” said Horace, “and you will catch cold in this air, and lose your voice. You must tie this handkerchief around your throat.”
She took his blue silk handkerchief and tied it around her throat, and wore it until just as they were turning away from the shore, when she took it off to return to him; and the last gust of wind that blew that afternoon whisked it out of her hand, and sent it whirling a hundred yards out to sea.