These divided Ethel’s attention with her needlework, waiting upon customers, doing errands for Mrs. Baker, and chatting with the little ones, who were a source of entertainment, and of whom there were two boys in addition to Jenny. They were but little fellows, going to school until the summer holidays began, but full of fun and frolic when at home, and Ethel and they soon became fast friends.
One day early in the fall Ethel received a letter from Mrs. Keith, in which she told of the coming home of her husband, a paroled prisoner from Andersonville, where he had been for some time, suffering so terribly that his health seemed ruined for life. His parents and other near relatives in Indiana were anxious to see him, she added, and they had decided to go out there for some weeks, taking the children with them. She hoped the trip would prove of benefit to Mr. Keith, and that he would return home looking and feeling more as he did before going into the army, for now he was so pale and thin that it almost broke her heart to look at him and hear his sad story of the barbarous treatment he and his fellow-prisoners had received at the hands of their cruel jailors; then from that she went on to tell of the starvation, filth, exposure to the weather, and shooting down on the slightest protest, which made of Andersonville prison-pen a veritable hell upon earth.
Ethel read that part of the letter first to herself, then aloud to Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Ray, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, while her hearers wept with her.
“Ah,” sighed Mrs. Baker, “God grant this cruel war may soon be over, and that my poor husband may never be a prisoner in the hands of those worse than savage men!”
“And oh, I hope my poor cousins, George and Albert, may escape it too!” exclaimed Ethel. “How very, very dreadful it is! how can men be so cruel? worse than any wild beast.”
“Oh, hark!” exclaimed Mrs. Baker. “What is it that newsboy is crying? Atlanta taken? I must have a paper!” and she rushed to the door, beckoned to the lad, and in a minute was back again with the paper in her hand, and reading aloud to her mother and Ethel.
They rejoiced together in this new proof that the Union cause was gaining, the rebellion nearing its end.
Ethel had come to feel very much at home with these good women; though her wages were but small, she had succeeded so well in the disposal of the garments she had made on her own account and adorned with the specimens of needlework she had brought with her, that she felt in good spirits and very hopeful of being, at no very distant day, able to carry out her plan of starting in a business of her own and making a home for herself, her brother and sisters.
She was extremely desirous of doing that; yet she had become so attached to the two good women she was with that it gave her something of a heartache to think of leaving them.
She had thought she might be able to accomplish her desire at the end of her first year with Mrs. Baker, but her means were not sufficient, and all the friends she consulted esteemed her too young for such an undertaking; they also thought that while the war lasted she would not be so likely to succeed as in the better times to be hoped for at its close. So she waited and worked on with patience and perseverance, comforting herself with the thought of the future.