Off again I started and arrived at 97 Preston Street. I wrote on my card and sent it in:
"Does Mrs. C—— live here—a niece of Mrs. S——?"
In a moment there were two or three faces at the windows, and in another moment as many voices at the carriage door asking, "Is this George Pickett's wife and child?" and I was thankful to be once more where they knew George Pickett's wife and child.
Besides the lovely people whose home it was, there was with them, on her way to visit her mother, Mrs. General Boggs, one of the most charming women I ever met. She had just returned from the South. Her husband was in the Confederate Army. The next day we both went out to the home of her mother, my Soldier's aunt, Mrs. Symington.
XXV "EDWARDS IS BETTER"
The week I spent in Hartford County, Maryland, reminded me of my childhood, when I used to play that I was a "Princess" or a "Beggar," or "Morgiana of the Forty Thieves," or "The White Cat," or whatever character it would please me to select to play, for my heart and soul were separated from my body. I was not what I pretended to be. My body went to parties and receptions and dinners, and received people and drove and paid calls, while my soul waited with intense longing for the telegram, "Edwards is better."
One day I had been out to dine and, coming home, found awaiting me the message for which eyes and heart had been looking through a time that seemed almost eternal.