As Justin was obliged to be back at his camp before the hour of “tattoo,” he could stay but a few minutes with his friends. He soon arose, took an affectionate leave of them, and went away.
After this they saw but little of him at the parsonage.
And when Erminie wished to see her brother, she had to get a pass from the provost marshal’s office, and cross the river, and visit him in camp, in one of the forts of the lines forming the southern defences of Washington.
All this time Major Fielding passed his days reclining in an easy chair under the shade of the vine-wreathed porch, reading, smoking, and recruiting his strength.
Young Ethel went every day to the Navy Department, with which he seemed to have a great deal of business.
Britomarte and Erminie went daily to the hospitals, with kind words and good gifts to the soldiers.
And what was Elfie doing? For one thing, she was making great havoc in the heart of the young lieutenant, who had been, from the first, fascinated by her elfin charms, and for another thing, by the mysteriousness and eccentricity of her appearance and deportment, she was exciting all manner of disagreeable conjectures concerning herself among her surrounding friends.
She was not encouraging her young adorer; far from it, she was snubbing him in the most contemptuous manner possible, by either ignoring his offered attentions entirely, or else repelling them carelessly, as she would have brushed off a troublesome fly.
She grew moody, silent and unsocial. She studied Casey’s Tactics all day long, except for an hour in the morning, which she spent in drilling. She borrowed her father’s rifle, and went through the exercises with it, while the quiet drawing-room of the parsonage echoed with “the accents of an unknown tongue.”
“Shoale-dore—HUMS! Pre-sent—HUMS! Shoale-dore—HUMS!”