“Well?” Isaac replied calmly. “Why shouldn’t they? They are not soldiers, you know, corporal, and so long’s the fort is taken why wouldn’t it be as well if they didn’t try to ape military manners?”
The old man gazed sternly at the boy while one might have counted ten, and then said in a tone of sadness:
“It’s a shame, Isaac Rice, that after bein’ with me all these years, an’ hearin’ more or less regardin’ military matters, you shouldn’t have more sense.”
“Why, what have I said now, corporal? Is it any harm to think that farmers might take a fort?”
“Of course it is, lad. If anything of that kind could happen, what’s the use of having soldiers?”
“But I suppose it is necessary to have an army if there’s going to be war,” Isaac replied innocently, and this last was sufficient to completely fill the vials of the old man’s wrath.
That this pupil of his should fail at the very first opportunity to show a proper spirit, was to him most disappointing, and during the half-hour which followed he refused to speak, even though Isaac alternately begged his pardon for having been so ignorant and expressed regret that he had said anything which might give offense.
During all this while the citizens of Pittsfield were following the recruits in a most friendly manner, believing it their duty to thus cheer those who might soon be amid the carnage of battle, and perhaps not one realized how seriously he was by such method offending Corporal ’Lige.
Isaac’s father was among this well-intentioned following, as were two of the lad’s brothers, and when these representatives of the Rice family, having walked as far as the head of the household deemed necessary, were about to turn back, they ranged themselves either side of the corporal and his pupil, in order to bid the latter farewell.
“I expect you will give a good account of yourself, Isaac, when it comes to fighting, and I feel all the more confident in regard to it because you are under the wing of a man who knows what it is to be a soldier.”