“You can not remain here,” he said. “You go on immediately.”
“Oh, no!” we said, “we’re not going on now. We are going to stop here for a visit and until we are rested.”
“You are prisoners and under orders. You go at once—” he began bruskly.
“Oh, no!” we interrupted, eager to enlighten him, for we saw he had made a very natural mistake. “We are not prisoners. Those poor Jews out there, they are prisoners. We are going to stop here on a little visit.”
“You don’t stop here an hour. This is Miss Oglesby’s destination, and she stops, but the rest of you go on—now.”
He looked as if he thought us demented. Goldsborough kept making faces at us, but we were so anxious to correct the adjutant’s mistake that we had no attention to bestow elsewhere. We thought we had never seen so stupid a man as that adjutant.
“We are not the prisoners,” we insisted. “Those Jews out there——”
Here he told Captain Goldsborough to conduct “these prisoners” down-stairs and into the ambulance provided for them. “You will not go far before you meet a detachment of cavalry on their way to this place,” he informed Captain Goldsborough, and then instructed him to turn back of these a sufficient escort for our party.
We were in a perfect rage as Captain Goldsborough led us down-stairs. We thought Milroy’s adjutant the very rudest and stupidest person we had ever seen.