Helen had broken down an old convention, having made an attempt that few women of her class and period would have dared, and at a time, too, when she might have been fearful of the results. She was joyous as if a burden had been lifted. Prescott rarely had seen her in such spirits. She, who was usually calm and grave, seemed to have forgotten the war. She laughed and jested and saw good humour in everything.
Prescott could not avoid catching the infection from the woman whom he most admired. The atmosphere—the very air—took on an unusual brilliancy. The brick walls and the shingled roofs glittered in the crisp, wintry sunshine; the schoolboys, caps over their ears and mittens on their fingers, played and shouted in the streets just as if peace reigned and the cannon were not rumbling onward over there beyond the trees.
"Isn't this world beautiful at times?" said Helen.
"It is," replied Robert, "and it seems all the more strange to me that we should profane it by war. But here comes Mrs. Markham. Let us see how she will greet you."
Mrs. Markham was in a sort of basket cart drawn by an Accomack pony, one of those ugly but stout little horses which do much service in Virginia and she was her own driver, her firm white wrists showing above her gloves as she held the reins. She checked her speed at sight of Robert and Helen and stopped abreast of them.
"I was not deceiving you the other night, Captain Prescott," she said, after a cheerful good-afternoon "when I told you that all my carriage horses had been confiscated. Ben Butler, here—I call him Ben Butler because he is low-born and has no manners—arrived only last night, bought for me by my husband with a whole wheelbarrowful of Confederate bills: is it not curious how we, who have such confidence in our Government, will not trust its money."
She flicked Ben Butler with her whip, and the pony reared and tried to bolt, but presently she reduced him to subjection.
"Did I not tell you that he had no manners," she said. "Oh, how I wish I had the real Ben Butler under my hand, too! I've heard what you've done, Helen. But, tell me, is it really true? Have you actually gone to work—as a clerk in an office, like a low-born Northern woman?"
The colour in Helen's cheeks deepened and Robert saw the faintest quiver of her lower lip.
"It is true," she replied. "I am a secretary in Mr. Sefton's office and I get fifteen dollars a week."