“That’s just what I mean. You see there are not more than half enough to go around.”
“Well, why don’t they wash them?”
“Too much trouble, I suppose. And besides, anything is good enough for a conscript.”
Marcy did not in the least enjoy his supper. The soup was so badly smoked that it was not fit to eat, and the corn bread was not more than half baked. More than that, one of the prisoners urged him to make haste and “get away with that soup,” for he wanted the pan as soon as he could have it.
“Don’t mind him,” said Bowen. “Take your time. That’s the way they will all serve you when you get left.”
Up to this time Marcy Gray had not been troubled very much with the pangs of home-sickness. One seldom is when the bright sun is shining and he can see what is going on around him. It is when the quiet of night comes and everybody else is asleep that the young soldier thinks of home and the friends he has left behind him. It was so with Marcy Gray at any rate. When the supper dishes had been removed, and somebody had touched a match to a couple of sputtering candles which threw out just light enough to show how desolate and cheerless the big room really was, and the prisoners began arranging their blankets and quilts, and the joking and laughing ceased, then it was that Marcy’s fortitude was put to the test. He thought of his mother, of Jack, and Ben Hawkins, who had proved so stanch a friend to him, and told himself that he would never see them again. He had heard that nostalgia (that is the name the doctors give to homesickness) killed people sometimes, and he was sure it would kill him before the month was ended.
“What are you doing at that window?” demanded Bowen, breaking in upon his revery.
“I am watching the sentry in the yard below,” answered Marcy. “I wish I was in his place. It wouldn’t take me long to slip away in the darkness and draw a bee-line for home.”
“Well, you just let that sentry alone and come here and lie down,” said Bowen.
“What’s the use? I can’t go to sleep.”