"An' he thought the lightning could come in there to take him—kee—kee—" giggled Adelaide.
"Oh, wasn't he a foolish horse!" commented Geraldine, regretfully.
"Uncle Ephraim said Ac'obat had no religion else he'd have stayed where he was put like a Christian," Adelaide observed.
"Oh, but he was just a horse—poor Ac'obat!"
At this moment emulation seized Geraldine. "Oh, my—just look how Lucille is double-quickin' about that lint pickin'!"
And a busy silence ensued.
The large rooms were half full of members of the society. In those days the infinite resources of the "ready-made" had not penetrated to these regions, and doubtless the work of such eager and industrious coteries carried comfort and help farther than one can readily imagine, and the organized aid of woman's needle was an appreciable blessing. Two or three matrons, with that wise, capable look of the able house-sovereign, when scissors, or a dish, or a vial of medicine is in hand, sat with broad "lapboards" across their knees, and cut and cut the coarse garments with the skill of experts, till great piles were lying on the floor, caught up with a stitch to hold component parts together and passed on to the younger ladies at the sewing-machines that whirred and whirred like the droning bees forever at the jessamine blooming about the windows. Nothing could be more unbeautiful or uninviting than the aspect of these stout garments, unless it were to the half-clad soldier in the trenches to whom they came like an embodied benediction. The thought of him—that unknown, unnamed beneficiary, for whose grisly needs they wrought—was often, perhaps, in the mind of each.
"And oh!" cried Adelaide, "while I'm pickin' lint for this hospital, I dust know some little girl away out yonder in the Confederacy is pickin' lint too—an' if my papa was to get wounded, they'd have plenty."
"Pickin' fast, she is, like us!" cried the hastening Geraldine.
The deft-fingered mute, discerning their meaning by the motion of their lips, redoubled her speed.