The eldest daughter said that the Captain might take the stacks at his own valuation, but trusted to his honor as a soldier, and as he seemed, a gentleman, to deal justly by them. There could be no crop harvested for a twelvemonth, and beggary looked them in the face. I have never beheld anything more chivalrously gallant, than the sturdy old quartermaster's attitude. He blended in tone and face the politeness of a diplomat and the gentleness of a father. They asked him to return to the house, with his officers, when he had loaded the wagons; for dinner was being prepared, and they hoped that Virginians could be hospitable, even to their enemies. As to the hay and fodder, none need be left; for the Confederates had seized their horses some months before, and driven off their cows when they retired from the neighborhood.
I so admired the queer gables and great brick ovens of the house, that I resolved to tie my horse, and rest under the crooked porch. The eldest young lady had taken me to be a prisoner, and was greatly astonished that the Quartermaster permitted me to go at large. She asked me to have a chair in the parlor, but when I made my appearance there, the two younger sisters fled precipitately. The old man was shaking his head sadly by the fireplace. Some logs burned on the andirons with a red flame. The furniture consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and chairs,—ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving in the staunchest of walnut-wood.
Directly the two younger girls—though the youngest must have been twenty years of age—came back with averted eyes and the silliest of giggles. They sat a little distance apart, and occasionally nodded or signalled like school children.
"Wish you would stop, Bell!" said one of these misses,—whose flaxen hair was plastered across her eyebrows, and who was very tall and slender.
"See if I don't tell on you," said the other,—a dark miss with roguish eyes and fat, plump figure, and curls that shook ever so merrily about her shoulders.
"Declar' I never said so, if he asks me; declar' I will."
"Tell on you,—you see! Won't he be jealous? How he will car' on!"
I made out that these young ladies were intent upon publishing their obligations to certain sweethearts of theirs, who, as it afterward seemed, were in the army at Manassas Junction. I said to the curly-haired miss, that she was endangering the life of her enamored; for it would become an object with all the anxious troops in the vicinity to shorten his days. The old man roused up here, and remarked that his health certainly was declining; but he hoped to survive a while longer for the sake of his children; that he was no politician, and always said that the negroes were very ungrateful people. He caught his daughter's eye finally, and cowered stupidly, nodding at the fire.
I remarked to the eldest young woman,—called Prissy (Priscilla) by her sister,—that the country hereabout was pleasantly wooded. She said, in substance, that every part of Virginia was beautiful, and that she did not wish to survive the disgrace of the old commonwealth.
"Become right down hateful since Yankees invaded it!" exclaimed Miss Bell. "Some Yankee's handsome sister," said Miss Bessie, the proprietor of the curls, "think some Yankees puffick gentlemen!"