“Well, I like soldiers,” said Jeanne. “My brother, Dick, is one, and whenever I see a soldier suffering I always want to do something for him. You are fighting for us, you know. Are you sick?”
“No; but I have been. I just came out of the hospital a few days ago, and I am not so strong as I thought.”
“You should go home and stay until you get well,” said the girl with a quaint assumption of maternal authority.
“Home! I have none.” The young man’s brow darkened. “If I were to go to my home, I would be spurned from its doors.”
“But why?” cried Jeanne.
“Listen, and you shall hear, child. I am a native of the state of Louisiana. I was educated at West Point, and when the war broke out had just graduated. You know the conditions under which we are entered, do you not?”
“We are to serve the country four years for the education given, so when the war came I felt it my duty to give those four years. I went to my father and told him so briefly. ‘Never darken my door again while you wear that uniform,’ he said. ‘You are no son of mine if you side in with a horde of miscreants sent to invade the sacred soil of the South.’ I told him that it was my duty. That I had but just graduated and that my honor demanded that I should repay my debt to the government, but he would not listen. So I left him.”
“But have you no friends?” asked Jeanne, her face aglow with compassion.
“Friends? No; they fight on the other side,” was the bitter reply. “And what do these Yankees care for me? They don’t realize what I have given up.”