"Yes?" echoed Susan. "Why didn't she come along? Did you come all the way alone?"
"No," answered Josey, with the least little bit of hesitation in her answer, and the tiniest flush creeping up on her face, that neither of the others had the tact to see. "There were some friends of mine going on to Niagara, and so I had company all the way to Utica, and they set me down there." Sly Joe!—why did she use the plural number,—"friends," and "they"? Why will people, even those belonging to the most irreproachable classes of society, indulge in these little fibs upon occasion?
"Oh, Cousin Joe," said Susy, "you do not know what a nice little room we have for you, up-stairs. The vines have climbed up and half covered the window, and a robin has built its nest in one of the branches of the big apple-tree, that hangs so close to it. Little robie will wake you early in the morning, I'll be bound—none of the late lying in bed that they say you all practice in the great city!"
"No, you rose-bud!" exclaimed Joe. "I will get up as early as any of you, especially as I have not come out here to be idle, but to work. But where is Uncle?—I have not seen him yet?"
"Your Uncle Halstead," said Aunt Betsey, with a shade of sorrow momentarily crossing her kindly face. "Oh, I suppose you did not know it! Your Uncle has gone to the war, with the rest of them. There have a great many gone from Oneida—scarcely a family that does not miss one member at least. Some of them will not come back, I suppose; and some may. God shelter and keep your Uncle! It was a little hard to part with him, after being together nearly all the time for so many years; but he felt that he must go, and he knew his duty best."
"And you so cheerful about it that I did not even know till now that he was gone!" said Joe, with surprise.
"Why yes," said her Aunt. "If they have a duty to fight for the country, we have a duty to be patient while they are gone and do the best we can with what they leave behind them!"
Bravely and truly said, wife of the Oneida soldier! If the battles of the Union are lost, half the fault will lie with the women who have preferred their own ease and the contentment of their own affections, to the peril of their native land; and if those battles are won, no small share of the credit will be due to those true-hearted descendants of Molly Starke, who have emulated the self-sacrificing spirit of the women of old Rome and sent off the husbands they loved and the sons upon whom they leaned, to win their love and confidence over again on the battle-field, or to die for the worshipped flag and the perilled nation!
"God shelter and keep him, indeed!" responded the young girl. "And he will, without a doubt." No one could exactly understand why it should be so, in conjunction with the dash and freedom of her character; but hidden away somewhere among the dark glossy hair was a bump of Veneration that recognized the Supreme Being with the most filial love and trust, and in the heart there was a corresponding throb of gratitude, confidence and childlike dependence.
"But what have you got, out-of-doors?" she asked, changing her manner again to that of one who had no thought beyond the present. "I have not quite forgotten how the old yard looks, with the smoke-house, close to the back door, and the barn at the other end. Got any pigs and chickens? And how's your cat?"