Involuntarily Josh’s eye went to the white-spouted brown earthenware teapot, that, as far back as he could remember, had sat in the middle of the second shelf of the oak-dresser when not in active use. The ghost of a twinkle flickered in his blue eye, the hovering shadow of a grin was on his solid countenance. He remembered the First Exodus and its cause. His mother may have read his thought. She said in clanging tones, as intolerable to her son’s hearing as though an iron tray were being beaten with a poker close to his ear:
“Was it my doing that you casted in your lot with the shedders of blood? No, but your own upping pride, and wicked stubbornness. Back wi’ ye to Barracks, and bide there! I ha’ got no more to say!”
The fleshy, red-whiskered face that aged and bleached under her indomitable regard sent strange shudders through her, in its likeness to the pinched, gray waxen mask she had kissed upon the stiff-frilled pillow of her husband’s death-bed. From the mouth that had straightened into a pale line under the flaming mustache came words, uttered in the very tones of the dying:
“And my wife?”
The broad hand shook that spread itself protectingly over the little brown head that shed its wealth of dark silken ringlets upon Josh’s stalwart chest. A voice came from their ambush; no frightened whimper, but a clear and resolute utterance:
“Her goes wi’ her own dear husband, as a wife ought!”
He groaned, forgetful of the triumphing Digweed, and the hard black eyes of his listening mother....
“My girl, my girl! you don’t know what you be talking about, or what kind o’ women you would have to live alongside.”
Nelly lifted her cheek from the blue coat it nestled to, and met his look. Perhaps, if you had seen the quivering of the short upper-lip with the golden dust of freckles on it, and the brave way in which the hazel eyes laughed through a veil of tears, and the twisting of the pink fingers shyly interlacing upon her apron-band, you would have loved her nearly as much as Josh did.
“They would be soldiers’ wives, like I be myself, dear heart.”