“Where is your husband?”
“I have none,” replied the Sister, “and I am glad I have not.”
“Why are you glad?” he asked, getting very angry.
“Because,” she replied, “if I had I would have been employed in his affairs, consequently could not be here waiting on you.”
As if by magic he said in a subdued tone: “That will do,” and turned his face from her. The Sister left him, but presently returned and offered him his medicine, which he took without a murmur. When he recovered from his long illness he became one of the warmest friends of the Sisters.
As the war continued the Government also made use of the Sisters’ Hospital of St. Francis de Sales. Here all things were under the direct charge of the Sisters, the Government, in this particular instance, paying them a stated sum for their services. During the time their house was thus occupied about twenty-five hundred wounded soldiers were admitted, of whom but one hundred died.
The Sisters had been at Portsmouth about six months when the hospital was closed. Several of the Sisters were sent to other points, while the remainder started for Emmittsburg. The cars took them to Manassas, in the midst of an extensive encampment, where they were told they could not pass the Potomac, as the enemy was firing on all who appeared.
The army chaplain celebrated Mass at this point, an old trunk in a little hut serving as an altar. The Sisters were obliged to go to Richmond, and it was two weeks before a flag of truce could take them into Maryland. They met the Judge Advocate of the army on the boat and he showed them every attention, saying: “Your society has done the country great service, and the authorities in Washington hold your community in great esteem.”
CHAPTER IX.
LABORS IN FREDERICK CITY.
The Sisters quartered in a stone barracks that had been occupied by General Washington during the Revolutionary war. Patients see no necessity for “tincture of iron” from the doctors. Soldiers without food for thirteen days. Young scholastics from the Jesuit Novitiate in the capacity of nurses. Not enemies “except upon the battlefield.”