The travellers had almost reached the end of this toilsome horseback journey, when rains set in, and, for forty-eight hours more, swollen floods and broken bridges held them back, though within hearing of the locomotive’s whistle.
But at length, one morning, Mary stepped aboard the train that had not long before started south from the town of Holly Springs, Mississippi, assisted with decorous alacrity by the conductor, and followed by the station-agent with Alice in his arms, and by the telegraph-operator with a home-made satchel or two of luggage and luncheon. It was disgusting,—to two thin, tough-necked women, who climbed aboard, unassisted, at the other end of the same coach.
“You kin just bet she’s a widder, and them fellers knows it,” said one to the other, taking a seat and spitting expertly through the window.
“If she aint,” responded the other, putting a peeled snuff-stick into her cheek, “then her husband’s got the brass buttons, and they knows that. Look at ’er a-smi-i-ilin’!”
“What you reckon makes her look so wore out?” asked the first. And the other replied promptly, with unbounded loathing, “Dayncin’,” and sent her emphasis out of the window in liquid form without disturbing her intervening companion.
During the delay caused by the rain Mary had found time to refit her borrowed costume. Her dress was a stout, close-fitting homespun of mixed cotton and wool, woven in a neat plaid of walnut-brown, oak-red, and the pale olive dye of the hickory. Her hat was a simple round thing of woven pine straw, with a slightly drooping brim, its native brown gloss undisturbed, and the low crown wrapped about with a wreath of wild grasses plaited together with a bit of yellow cord. Alice wore a much-washed pink calico frock and a hood of the same stuff.
“Some officer’s wife,” said two very sweet and lady-like persons, of unequal age and equal good taste in dress, as their eyes took an inventory of her apparel. They wore bonnets that were quite handsome, and had real false flowers and silk ribbons on them.
“Yes, she’s been to camp somewhere to see him.”
“Beautiful child she’s got,” said one, as Alice began softly to smite her mother’s shoulder for private attention, and to whisper gravely as Mary bent down.
Two or three soldiers took their feet off the seats, and one of them, at the amiably murmured request of the conductor, put his shoes on.