Harriot began to sob from excitement and sympathy for the sister she adored, and Dorothea put an arm about her comfortingly.
Harriot looked at her cousin through her tears.
“I don’t think you care at all,” she murmured, and Dorothea was surprised to find that there was some truth in the words. At least she did not find herself sorrowing over the waning fortunes of the South.
CHAPTER XVIII
A DISTRESSING INCIDENT
Hal May remained at home only two days, but in that time his old uniform was patched and Aunt Decent plied him with food until he pleaded lack of room for more, so that when he went away he had perceptibly improved in appearance.
Again the May household settled down to the humdrum business of waiting for news of the armies. And Sherman’s march through Georgia gave the people of little Washington many anxious moments, though it soon became apparent that their town would escape and that after Atlanta, Savannah was the chief objective of the Federal expedition.
Of Val Tracy there was scarcely a word. He seemed to have dropped out of sight, but not out of the minds of his friends. Dorothea, remembering the last time she had seen him mount his horse and ride away, wondered often what was happening to him. She and Miss Imogene talked much of the young Irishman and speculated also upon the fortune of young Stanchfield whose whereabouts were still unknown to them.
Dorothea had grown to be one of the family and her aunt treated her as if she were another daughter. Harriot was her devoted slave, and at first April had shown a fondness for her English cousin, which she had been quick to return. But there was none of the close intimacy between the two that Dorothea would have welcomed.
And the cause of this was not far to seek. Even Dorothea realized that a certain change had come in her feelings toward the rights and wrongs of the war. It was impossible for her to respond to April’s enthusiastic support of everything the Confederacy represented. Nor could she condemn the North in all things with the fervor April expected of those who claimed sympathy with the South. Always there was the remembrance of her visit to Mr. Lincoln. When she heard the Union execrated with unmeasured bitterness she pictured in her mind the tall, gentle man in Washington into whose eyes she had looked. There she had read the truth, and knew that he had none of the sordid qualities that were attributed to him by his unreasoning enemies. Dorothea did not believe that he could be wrong in his efforts to solve the great problems confronting him, for she knew that his heart held a great sympathy for the South.