"No," said Caleb, promptly, "though the Eastern men complained a great deal."
"What did the soldiers do when they became sick in hot weather?"
"They died, generally, unless they was shipped up North, or to some of the big camps of hospitals, where they could get special attention."
"But until then were there no ways of shielding them from the heat of the sun?"
"Oh, yes. If the camp hospital was a tent, it had a fly—an extra thickness of canvas, stretched across it to shade the roof an' sides. Then, if any woods was near by, and usually there was,—there's more woodland in old Virginia than in this new state,—some forked sticks an' poles an' leafy tree-boughs would be fetched in, an' fixed so that the ground for eight or ten feet around would be shady."
"Do you remember just how it was done?"
"Do I? Well, I reckon I was on details at that sort o' work about as often as anybody."
"Won't you do me a great favor? Hire a man and wagon to-morrow—or to-day, if there's time—and go to some of our woodland near town, and get some of the material, and put up such a shade on the south and west sides of our house; that is, if you don't object."
"Object? 'Twould be great fun; make me feel like a boy again, I reckon. But I ought to remind you that the thing won't look a bit pretty, two or three days later, when the leaves begin to fade. Dead leaves an' a white house don't 'compose,' as I heard you say one day to a woman about two calicoes that was contrary to each other. Besides, 'tain't necessary, for double-width sheetin', or two widths of it side by side, an' right out of the store here, would make a better awnin', to say nothin' o' the looks, an' you can afford it easy enough."
"Perhaps, but there are other people who can't, and I want to show off a tree-bough awning to some who need contrivances like it."