Foolish Jimmie. It was folly for him to lie awake so long as he did that night, or to dream, when at last he slept, of hospital walls expanding into a palace as an angel form with hair and eyes like Annie’s bent over his feverish pillow, while soft, white hands dressed some gaping wound where the enemy’s bullet had been. Sheer folly, too, was it for “dignified old Tom,” to watch from his window the young moon, until it set in the western sky, thinking of Mary, as he tried to make himself believe, wondering why it was that Annie reminded him so much of her, and why he should be so deeply interested in one who, until a few weeks past, had been to him a stranger.
To Annie, Captain Carleton and Jimmie were nothing more than friends, and if, during the week preceding their departure, she was quite as busy as Rose, and apparently as much interested in the various preparations for their comfort, it was only because they were soldiers, and not, as Widow Simms once suggested to Susan, “because they were Carletons, and handsome and rich, and,—and,—well, there’s no tellin’ what will happen, when a widder’s young and handsome, but this I know, I’ve never married, and my man’s been dead this nineteen years! Nobody need tell me she’d be so busy for anybody but them Carletons. If ’twas the Cap’n, I wouldn’t mind, but that sassy-faced Jeems. Ugh!” and in her ire at Annie’s supposed preference for “sassy-faced Jeems,” the widow spilled more than half of the spiced chocolate she was carrying to Isaac.
Never was the widow more mistaken. Annie Graham would have done for Eli, John, and Isaac Simms, or possibly William Baker, the same offices she was doing for “the Carletons,” and her voice would have been just as sweet and hopeful when she bade them farewell, as it was that bright spring morning, when, in the parlor of the Mather mansion, Tom and Jimmie were waiting to say good-bye.
At the very last moment Bill Baker had announced his intention of going too.
“Thirteen dollars a month and dog’s fare was better than layin’ round hum,” he said; “and livin’ on the old gal, who was gittin’ most too straight and blue for his notions. Besides that, he felt kinder ’tached to the Corp’ral, and wanted to be where he could see him and wait on him like any other nigger.”
Jimmie would gladly have dispensed with such a singular attaché, but Bill could not be shaken off, and as he did in various ways evince a strong regard for his former captive, Jimmie was forced to submit to what he termed “his thorn in the flesh,” giving from his own purse money for Billy’s outfit, and furnishing the mother with means to repair her dwelling and make it far more comfortable than at present. This he was sure pleased Annie, and no sacrifice was too costly if it won her regard. She had prayed for him, he knew, for Rose had told him so, and prayers like hers, though they did not avail to save her George’s life, would surely shield him from danger. He should come back again when the war was over,—come back to find an older grave by Rockland’s churchyard gate, while the wife, who daily watered that grave with tears, would be as young, as beautiful, and far more girlish-looking than now, when, in her widow’s weeds, she offered him her hand at parting, bidding God speed to him and the noble Tom, who stood beside him.
There were tears, and kisses, and blessings from Rose and her mother, a few low-spoken words of sympathy and good will from Annie, and then the two young men were gone.
Half an hour later, and the eastern train thundered through the town, bearing away to the fields of bloody carnage, three more young, vigorous lives, and leaving desolate two homes, one the lonely cottage, where Bill’s mother wept alone, the other the Mather mansion, where Mrs. Carleton and Rose sobbed bitterly, while Annie strove in various ways to comfort them.
CHAPTER XX.
AT THE MATHER MANSION.
