“I am not. At least, I am a widow.”
He rose still higher in bed. He pushed away desperately the tangled hay on his brow. A faint color fluttered over the hollow cheek, and stretching out a long piece of bone with a talon attached, he gently touched my arm and with constrained voice whispered mysteriously:
“You wait!”
And readers, I am waiting still; and I here caution the male portion of creation who may adore through their mental powers, to respect my confidence, and not seek to shake my constancy.
Compliments.
Other compliments were paid me, perhaps not of so conclusive a nature, and they were noticeable from their originality and novelty, but they were also rare. Expression was not a gift among the common soldiers. “You will wear them little feet away,” said a rough Kentuckian, “running around so much. They ar’n’t much to boast of anyway.” Was not this as complimentary as the lover who compared his mistress’s foot to a dream; and much more comprehensible?
More flattering than agreeable.
At intervals the lower wards, unused except in times of great need, for they were unfurnished with any comforts, would be filled with rough soldiers from camp, sent to recuperate after field service, who may not have seen a female face for months; and though generally too much occupied to notice them much, their partly concealed, but determined regard would become embarrassing. One day, while directing arrangements with a ward-master, my attention was attracted by the pertinacious staring of a rough-looking Texan. He walked round and round me in rapidly narrowing circles, examining every detail of my dress, face, and figure; his eye never fixing upon any particular part for a moment but traveling incessantly all over me. It seemed the wonder of the mind at the sight of a new creation. I moved my position; he shifted his to suit the new arrangement—again a change was made, so obviously to get out of his range of vision, that with a delicacy of feeling that the roughest men always treated me with, he desisted from his inspection so far, that though his person made no movement, his neck twisted round to accommodate his eyes, till I supposed some progenitor of his family had been an owl. The men began to titter, and my patience became exhausted.
Compliments again.
“What is the matter, my man? Did you never see a woman before?”