“My pride? Ah, my son, it is on the battlefield, over at Seven Pines, and upstairs with Howard.”
“Well, I don’t care, mother,” he persisted obstinately. “I love you and all that, you know it,—but I can’t stand this. I’ve got to go. I must go.”
Mrs. Varney recognised from the ring of determination in the boy’s voice that his mind was made up. She could no longer hold him. With or without her consent he would go, and why should she withhold it? Other boys as young as hers had gone and had not come back. Aye, there was the rub: she had given one, the other trembled on the verge, and now the last one! Yes, he must go, too,—to live or die as God pleased. If they wanted her to sacrifice everything on the altar of her country, she had her own pride, she would do it, as hundreds of other women had done. She rose from her chair and went toward her boy. He was a slender lad of sixteen but was quite as tall as she. As he stood there he looked strangely like his father, thought the woman.
“Well,” she said at last, “I will write to your father and——”
“But,” the boy interrupted in great disappointment, “that’ll take forever. You never can tell where his brigade is from day to day. I can’t wait for you to do that.”
“Wilfred,” said his mother, “I can’t let you go without his consent. You must be patient. I will write the letter at once, and we will send it by a special messenger. You ought to hear by to-morrow.”
The boy turned away impatiently and strode toward the door.
“Wilfred,” said his mother gently. The tender appeal in her voice checked him. She came over to him and put her arm about his shoulders. “Don’t feel bad, my boy, that you have to stay another day with your mother. It may be many days, you know, before——”
“It isn’t that,” said Wilfred.
“My darling boy—I know it. You want to fight for your country—and I’m proud of you. I want my sons to do their duty. But with your father at the front, one boy dead, and the other wounded, dying——”