He looked up quickly.
“How do you do, Nell?” he said. “I got leave to come from camp to see you to-day. My company got in from Maryland yesterday.”
“Dick!” I cried in amazement; and then I burst into tears. Dick, our dandy, to look like this! Laughter mingled with weeping.
“Good gracious, Nell! what is the matter?” he said.
“Dick, Dick, how you look!”
“Hush, Nell! Good gracious! You’ll have everybody in the dining-room out here to look at me.”
Then I began to beg incoherently that he would go in and dine with me. I think Dick was hungry, but he was not that hungry. In his present garb starvation would not have driven him into a dining-room where ladies were. He looked toward the door with abject terror, and tried to hide himself behind the hat-rack. I was puzzled to know what I should do with him. As a young lady was my roommate it was out of the question to take him to my room, and he positively refused to go into the parlor. While we debated, the dining-room door opened and the ladies filed out into the hall. Unkempt, unshorn, patched, ragged, and dirty, a very travesty of his former foppish self, Dick went through the introductions with what grace he might.
Fortunately my friends who surrounded him were in sympathy with the threadbare Confederate soldier, and ready to help him to the extent of their power. One friend, whose husband had a shirt to spare, gave that to him; another lady found him a pair of socks; some one else contributed a pair of homespun drawers. I was drawn aside and consulted as to the best and most graceful way of conveying these presents to him. They feared that he might be wounded and insulted if the matter were not delicately managed. But Dick was past all that. He accepted the goods the gods provided in the spirit in which they were bestowed, and was radiant with his good luck, and with gratitude to the fair donors. While we held council he had been in Mrs. Rixey’s and Miss Boyd’s hands, and had had a good dinner.
As he stood in the hall ready to go back to camp, Belle Boyd came down the staircase, carrying a large new blanket shawl.
“You must let me wrap you up, lieutenant,” she said, putting the shawl around Dick’s shoulders and pinning it together.