“Yes,” spoke Peggy. “It might be worse, Clifford.”
So there were no more rides; but as the weather began to be very hot, and exceedingly dry, they consoled themselves with the reflection that riding would be extremely unpleasant under such conditions. Another week glided by, in which there was no sign of Harriet, nor was there any further order from the commander-in-chief. It seemed as though they had been set down in the midst of the cantonment and forgotten. The strain began to tell upon Clifford.
“Would that it were over,” burst from him one morning as he sat with Peggy under the shade of a tree near the quarters of the Dayton family. In the distance a company was drilling, and the orders of its officer came to them faintly.
Peggy let fall the ox-eyed daisy whose petals she had been counting, and turned toward him in dismay.
“Clifford, thee don’t mean that,” she cried.
“But I do, Peggy,” he answered passionately. “The fluctuations from hope to despair, and from despondency to hope again are far more trying than a certain knowledge of death would be. It keeps me on tenter-hooks. So long as the thing is inevitable, I wish it would come.”
Peggy looked at him anxiously. His face was pale, and there were deep circles under his eyes that spoke of wakeful nights. His experience with his sister had been far more distressing than she had realized. It came to the girl with a shock just how care-worn he was.
“Would that father were here that he might comfort thee,” she cried tearfully. “Thee needs him, my cousin.”
“An he were, he would say—‘My lad, thy promise was that Peggy should not be saddened by talk of thy woes; yet here thee is dwelling upon thy sorrow both to thy detriment and hers.’”