“Oh, I wrote him often enough,” answered Angela laughing. “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Neville. I recollect four perfectly dreadful Christmases when he was at West Point and couldn’t come home. I was so miserable then, I remember.”
“So do I remember,” answered Lyddon. “I remember that you made a great outcry about your misery, but you laughed and were as merry as any child I ever saw on Christmas day, and danced in the evening until Mrs. Tremaine sent you to bed.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I danced! I can’t help that. When the music is playing it runs through my veins and makes me dance in spite of myself.”
“Now that Neville is a soldier you can’t expect him to be home every Christmas.”
“Yes, I know there will be dreadful Christmas times without him——”
“And you will do as you did when you were a little girl, cry and lament and then enjoy yourself very much. That is, until the war begins.”
“Oh, that won’t make any difference,” replied Angela easily and adopting the tone of her elders; “the war won’t last long and we shall be victorious, of course, and there will be comings and goings and great happenings all the time. Anything is better than this life of deadly dullness. Neville and Richard will both be officers. Neville, I suppose, will be a general at twenty-six or seven as the young lieutenants and captains became in the time of the French Revolution.”
“‘O sancta simplicitas!’ as Mephistopheles says. So they may, my little girl, and there will be a great many things in this war, if it comes, very like the French Revolution. But you remember there were lieutenants who went away and never came back any more at all.”
“O Mr. Lyddon, nobody says such dreadful things except yourself.”
“I know it. War is a merry jest to these people in Virginia. The notion will be spoiled soon enough; meanwhile, dream your dream of victory. It is a fine dream, as Marshal Saxe said.”