“I never marched so fast before,” he said complainingly. “My feet are sore all over.”
“Put on your shoes an' shut up,” said another boy. “Stonewall Jackson don't care nothin' about your feet. You're here to fight.”
Harry walked on, but the words sank deep in his mind. It was an uneducated boy, probably from the hills, who had given the rebuke, but he saw that the character of Stonewall Jackson was already understood by the whole army, even to the youngest private. He found Langdon and St. Clair sitting together on a log. They were not tired, as they were mounted officers, but they were full of curiosity.
“What's passing through Old Jack's head?” asked Langdon, the irreverent and the cheerful.
“I don't know, and I don't suppose anybody will ever know all that's passing there.”
“I'll wager my year's pay against a last year's bird nest that he isn't leading us away from the enemy.”
“He certainly isn't doing that. We're moving on two little towns, Bath and Hancock, but there must be bigger designs beyond.”
“This is New Year's Day, as you know,” said St. Clair in his pleasant South Carolina drawl, “and I feel that Tom there is going to earn the year's pay that he talks so glibly about wagering.”
“At any rate, Arthur,” said Langdon, “if we go into battle you'll be dressed properly for it, and if you fall you'll die in a gentleman's uniform.”
St. Clair smiled, showing that he appreciated Langdon's flippant comment. Harry glanced at him. His uniform was spotless, and it was pressed as neatly as if it had just come from the hands of a tailor. The gray jacket of fine cloth, with its rows of polished brass buttons, was buttoned as closely as that of a West Point cadet. He seemed to be in dress and manner a younger brother of the gallant Virginia captain, Philip Sherburne, and Harry admired him. A soldier who dressed well amid such trying obstacles was likely to be a soldier through and through. Harry was learning to read character from extraneous things, things that sometimes looked like trifles to others.