“If Rose had minded her business Annie might possibly have been in this very ward, instead of that old maid from Massachusetts, who looks for all the world like those awful good women in Boston, who don’t wear hoops, and who distribute tracts on Sundays in the vicinity of Cornhill. Why can’t a woman look decent, and distribute tracts, too? Annie, in her black dress, with her hair done up somehow, would do more good to us poor invalids than forty strong-minded females in paste-board bonnets, with an everlasting pin between their teeth.”
Thus Jimmie fretted about Rose, and the Massachusetts woman, who, in spite of her big pin and paste-board bonnet, brought him many a nice dish of tea or bowl of soup, until the order came for him to go home, when, with an alacrity which almost belied the languor and weakness he had complained of so bitterly, he packed his valise and started again for Rockland. This time he wore the “army blue;” but the suit which at first had been so fresh and clean, was soiled, and worn, and hateful to the fastidious young man, who only endured it because he fancied it might in some way commend him to Annie Graham. Rose had written that she worshiped the very name of a soldier, especially if he were a poor private, her sympathies being specially enlisted for that class of people. And Jimmie was a poor private, and a wounded one at that, with his arm in a sling, and a cane in his hand, and his curly hair cut short, and his coat all wrinkled and soiled, and his knapsack on his back; and he was going home to Annie, who surely would welcome him now, and hold his hand a moment, and possibly dress his wound. That would be delightful; and Jimmie’s blood went tingling through his veins as he felt in fancy the soft touch of Annie’s fingers upon his flesh, and saw her head crowned with the pale brown hair bending over him. He felt a little disappointment that she was not at the depot to meet him, while his chagrin increased at the tardiness of her appearance after his arrival home, but she was coming at last, and Jimmie’s quick ear caught the rustle of her garments as she came down the stairs and into the room, smiling and blushing, as she took his offered hand, and begged him not to rise for her.
“You are lame yet, I see. I had hoped your ankle might be well,” she said, glancing at his cane, which he carried more from habit, and because it had been given him by an officer, than from any real necessity.
His sprained ankle was almost well, and only troubled him at times; but after Annie’s look of commiseration at the cane, and her evident intention to pity him for his ankle rather than his arm, he found it vastly easy to be lame again, and even made some excuse to cross the room in order to show off the limp which had not been very perceptible when he first came in. And Annie was very sorry for him, and inquired with a great deal of interest into the particulars of his being wounded, and kindly sat where he could look directly at her, and thought, alas! how much he was changed from the fashionably-dressed, saucy-faced young man who went from them only a few months before. Short hair was not becoming to him,—neither was his thin, burnt face,—neither was that soiled blue coat; and he looked as little as possible like a hero whom maidens could worship. Some such thought passed through Annie’s mind, while Rose, too, felt the change in her handsome brother, and, with a puzzled expression on her face, said to him, as she stood by his side:
“How queer you do look, with your hair so short, and the hollows in your cheeks! Does war change all the boys so much? Are Tom and Will such frights?”
“Rose!” Mrs. Carleton said, reprovingly, while Annie looked up in surprise, pitying Jimmie, whose chin quivered even more than his voice, as he said:
“Tom and Will have not been sick like me; and then,—there’s no denying it,—officers have easier times, as a general thing, than privates. I do not mean, by that, that I regret my position, for I do not. Somebody must take a private’s place, and it would better be I than a great many others; but, Rose, I shall regret it, perhaps, if by the means my looks become obnoxious to my sister and friends.”
There was a marked emphasis on the word friends, and Jimmie’s eyes went over appealingly to Annie, who remembered how proud the boy Dick Lee used to be of his beauty, and guessed how Rose’s remarks must have wounded him. Rose suspected it, too, and winding her arms around his neck she tried to apologize.
“Forgive me, Jimmie,” she said; “I did not mean anything; only your hair is so short,—just like the convicts at Charlestown,—and your coat is so tumbled and dirty; but Hannah can wash that, or I can buy you a new one,” and Rose stumbled on, making matters ten times worse, until Mrs. Carleton succeeded in turning the conversation upon something besides her son’s personal appearance.
Annie was very sorry for him, and her sympathy expressed itself in the soft light of her blue eyes which rested so kindly upon him, and in the low, gentle cadence of her voice when she addressed him, and her eager haste to bring him whatever she thought he wanted, and so save him the pain of walking!