"There, Helen," said Mrs. Manly, "you've got your joke back with interest. Now I'd hold my tongue, if I was you."
"Frank and I wouldn't know each other if we didn't have a little fun together," said Helen. "Besides, we'll all feel serious enough by and by, I guess." For she loved her brother devotedly, much as she delighted to tease him; and she would have been glad to drown in merry jests the thought of the final parting, which was now so near at hand.
They were cordially received at Mrs. Gillett's house; and there Mrs. Manly enjoyed the wished-for opportunity of talking with her son, and Willie had a chance to beat the drum in the attic, and Mrs. Gillett secretly emptied Frank's haversack of its rations of pork and hard tack, and filled it again with excellent bread and butter, slices of cold lamb, and sponge cake. Moreover, a delightful repast was prepared for the visitors, at which Frank laughed at his own awkwardness, declaring that he had eaten from a tin plate so long, with his drumhead for a table, that he had almost forgotten the use of china and napkins.
"If Hattie was only here now!" he said, again and again. For it needed only his invalid sister's presence, during these few hours, to make him perfectly happy.
"Eat generously," said the minister, "for it may be long before you sit at a table again."
"Perhaps I never shall," thought Frank, but he did not say so lest he might hurt his mother's feelings.
The minister was not at all such a person as he had expected to see, but only a very pleasant gentleman, not at all stiffened with the idea that he had the dignity of the profession to sustain. He was natural, friendly, and quite free from that solemn affectation which now and then becomes second nature in ministers some of us know, but which never fails to repel the sympathies of the young.
Mr. Egglestone was expecting soon to go out on a mission to the troops, and it was for this reason Mrs. Manly wished them to become acquainted.
"I wish you were going with our regiment," said Frank. "We have got a chaplain, I believe, but I have never seen him yet, or seen any body who has seen him."
"Well, I hope at least I shall meet you, if we both reach the seat of war," said the minister, drawing him aside. "But whether I do or not, I am sure that, with such a good mother as you have, and such dear sisters as you leave behind, you will never need a chaplain to remind you that you have something to preserve more precious than this mortal life of ours,—the purity and rectitude of your heart."