It was a most beautiful summer day, when at last he left her, and Rose’s heart was well nigh bursting with its load of pain. It was all in vain that she said her usual form of prayer, never more meaningless than now when her thoughts were so wholly absorbed with something else. She did not pray in faith, but because it was a habit of her childhood, a something she rarely omitted, unless in too great a hurry. No wonder then that she rose up from her devotion quite as grief-stricken as when she first knelt down. God does not often answer what is mere lip service, and Rose was yet a stranger to the prayer which stirs the heart and carries power with it. The parting was terrible, and Mr. Mather more than half repented when he saw how tightly she clung to his neck, begging him to take her with him, or at least to send for her very soon.
“What shall I do when you are gone? What can I do?” she sobbed, and her husband answered:
“You can work for me, darling,—work for all the soldiers. It will help divert your mind.”
“I can’t I can’t,” was Rose’s answer. “I don’t know how to work. Oh, Willie, Willie! I wish there wasn’t any war.
Willie wished so too, but there was no time now for regrets, for a rumbling in the distance and a rising wreath of smoke on the western plain warned him not to tarry longer if he would go that day. One more burning kiss,—one more fond pressure of the wife he loved so much,—a few more whispered words of hope, and then another Rockland volunteer had gone. Gone without daring to look backward to the little form lying just the same as he had put it from him, and yet not just the same. He had felt it quivering with anguish when he took his arms away, but the trembling, quivering motion was over now, and the form he had caressed lay motionless and still, all unconscious of the dreary pain throbbing in the heart, and all unmindful of the loud hurrah which greeted William Mather, as he stepped upon the platform of the car and waved his hat to those assembled there to see him off. Rose, who had meant at the very last to be so heroic, so brave, so worthy the wife of a soldier, had fainted.
CHAPTER V.
JIMMIE.
There were loving words being breathed into Rose’s ear, when she came back to consciousness, and there was something familiar in the touch of the hand bathing her brow, and smoothing her tangled hair, but Rose was too weak and sick to notice who it was caring for her so tenderly, until she heard the voice saying to her
“Is my daughter better?”
And then she threw herself with a wild scream of joy into the arms which had cradled her babyhood, sobbing piteously: