The Judge was giving Delaven the details of the Beaufort affair when Ben wheeled his master into the room. There 137 was an awkward pause, a slight embarrassment, but he had caught the words “Port Royal entrance,” and comprehended.
“Huh! Talking over that disaster, Judge?” he remarked. “I tell you what it is, you can’t convey to a foreigner anything of the feeling of the South over those misfortunes; to have Sherman’s tramps go rough-shod over your lawns and rest themselves with braggadocio at your tables––the most infernal riff-raff––”
“One moment,” interposed the Judge, blandly, with a view to check the unpleasant reminiscences. “Did I not hear you actually praise one of those Yankees?––in fact, assert that he was a very fine fellow?”
“Yes, yes; I had forgotten him. A Yankee captain; ordered the blue-coats to the right-about when he found there was only a sick man and a girl there; and more than that, so long as those scavengers were ashore and parading around Beaufort he kept men stationed at my gates for safeguard duty. A fine fellow, for a Yankee. I can only account for it by the fact that he was a West Point graduate, and was thus thrown, to a certain extent, into the society and under the influences of our own men. Kenneth, Col. McVeigh, had known Monroe there––his name was Monroe––Captain John Monroe––at Beaufort his own men called him Captain Jack.”
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“Just as she was stepping on ship board: ‘Your name I’d like to know?’ And with a smile she answered him, ‘My name is Jack Monroe!’” |
sang a fresh voice outside the window, and then the curtain was pushed aside and Evilena’s brown head appeared.
“I really could not help that, Mr. Loring,” she said, laughingly. “The temptation was too great. Did you never whistle ‘Jack Monroe’ when you were a boy?”
“No, I can’t say I ever did,” he replied, testily.
“It’s intensely interesting,” she continued, seating herself on the window sill and regarding him with smiling interest, made bold by the presence of her champion, the Judge. “Aunt Sajane taught it to me, an old, old sailor song. It’s all about her sweetheart, Jack, not Aunt Sajane’s sweetheart, but the girl’s. Her wealthy relatives separate them by banishing him to the wars somewhere, and she dressed up in boy’s clothes to follow him.