Herbert rose stiffly.
“Everything is ready, isn’t it, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, everything; the onions and the radishes and the lettuce and the peas.”
“Doesn’t it make you a little uncomfortable to think of going about peddling things from door to door to strange people?”
“Not a bit! It’s just as honorable to sell onions as diamonds or books. I’m so proud of my garden sass, I’d drive to the gate of the White House and offer it there. And I don’t mean my patrons to be strangers, I mean them to be friends. It’s quite time that we made acquaintances.”
Herbert sighed as he went into the house. Elizabeth stood for a while looking at the illuminated landscape and thinking, not of the morrow or of the menacing gun, but of a deeper source of anxiety. Would Herbert never get well and grow up to be a man? She did not mind hard work, but she wished now to share responsibility. He was anxious to do his part, but he was like a child, requiring direction and encouragement.
It was well that the wagon was already packed with the produce which Elizabeth meant to offer, because in the morning she had but one thought—she would see the battle-field of Gettysburg. Her curiosity had been only half gratified by her mother’s answers to her questions and her meager accounts in her school histories had told her little more. She meant to try to find books which described the battle, so that looking from her doorstep she should be able to picture to herself in detail the conflict which, she believed, had saved her country. She was intensely patriotic; long ago she had hung from one of the upper windows of the old house a little flag.
The brother and sister spoke but seldom as they drove down the hills. The morning was clear and bright, they were young, and a great adventure awaited them. It seemed to Elizabeth that each old farmhouse must have some patriotic significance, that each old tree could tell tales of valor.
“I wish I knew what had happened on this road!” said she.
Herbert shivered.