"Then so are we," she dryly responded, at which all laughed, though the two women had spent much time of late on a small boat which daily made the round of the bay's defenses. In a dingy borrowed rig they hastened away toward their lodgings.
As they drove, Anna pressed Miranda's hand and murmured, "Oh, for Hilary Kincaid!"
"Ah, dear! not to be in this--'tea-party'?"
"Yes! Yes! His boys were in so many without him, from Shiloh to Port Gibson, and now, with all their first guns lost forever--theirs and ours--lost for them, not by them--and after all this year of idleness, and the whole battery hanging to his name as it does--oh, 'Randy, it would do more to cure his hurts than ten hospitals, there or here."
"But the new risks, Nan, as he takes them!"
"He'll take them wherever he is. I can't rest a moment for fear he's trying once more to escape."
(In fact, that is what, unknown to her, he had just been doing.)
"But, 'Randa?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Whether he's here or there, Kincaid's Battery, his other self, will be in whatever goes on, and so, of course, will the Tennessee."