"Once is quite sufficient," said the General. "First impressions often endure. But stay. Draw your chairs. I was only saying that I may be required to leave here shortly."
"You have been transferred?" asked Marjorie.
"No! But I have written to Washington begging for a command in the navy. My wounds are in a fair way and less painful than usual, though there is little prospect of my being able to be in the field for a considerable time."
They sat down as requested, opposite Peggy and the General.
"But, General, have you not taken us into your consideration?" asked Anderson.
"I have, yet the criticism is becoming unendurable. Of course you have heard that matters have already become strained between the civil government and myself. Only last week my head aide-de-camp sent for a barber who was attached to a neighboring regiment, using as a messenger the orderly whom I had stationed at the door. For this trifling order there has been aroused a hornet's nest."
"Wherein lay the fault?" asked Marjorie.
"In this. It appears from a letter which I have already received from the father of the sergeant (Matlack is his name, to be exact) that the boy was hurt by the order itself and the manner of it, and as a freeman would not submit to such an indignity as to summon a barber for the aide of a commanding officer. We have a proud, stubborn people to rule, who are no more fitted for self-government than the Irish——"
He stopped short.
Marjorie bit her lip. "I wish, General, you would withdraw your comparison. It is painful to me."