“Why,” I said, “you are not your brother Dick. And then, I don’t dislike Dick at all.”
Again the trio looked at me as if they doubted the evidence of their senses.
“Nell, what did you tell such a story for?” George asked me privately later.
“Why, I didn’t tell any story at all,” I declared. “He isn’t his brother Dick, is he? And I don’t dislike Dick now.”
The night of the fair I wore a black bombazine, cut low in the neck and with long angel sleeves falling away from my arms above the elbow to the hem of my dress, and around my neck a band of black velvet with a black onyx cross. I sat or stood behind Mrs. Winton’s booth, and Mr. Grey haunted the booth all the evening, and bought quantities of things he had no use for.
After the fair he saw me or reminded me of his existence in some way every day. Mother took me, about this time, on a visit to some cousins in Birdville, and every day Mr. Grey rode out on Dare Devil, the horse that he was to ride into his first fight. There was another fair. I went in from Birdville to help, and had the same coterie of assistants. “Ben Bolt” was a great favorite then. It was a new song and divided honors with “Sweet Nellie is by my Side.” My assistants used to sit on a goods box that was later to be converted into an ornamental stand, and sing, “O don’t you Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?”
Well, to make a long story short—as Dan and I did—we were married in exactly four months and a half from the day on which he was introduced to me as I sat cross-legged among the evergreens; and when Willie and George and Charlie came up to congratulate us, every wretch of them said, “Didn’t I tell you you ought to meet Dan Grey?”
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY
Soon after my marriage my brother-in-law moved to Baltimore, and my mother decided to go with Milicent and her little boy. I had never really been separated from them before; I was only seventeen, a spoiled child, but though I loved them dearly, after the first I scarcely missed them. I had my husband, and ah! how happy we were—how glad we both were that I had met Dan Grey!
We did not go to housekeeping at once. In the first place, I did not know anything about housekeeping and I didn’t want Dan to find it out; in the second place, we wanted to look around before we settled upon a house; and in the third, and what was to me the smallest place, the country was in a very unsettled condition.