"You don't have to."
"No, Captain. . . . If you don't object, sir, I'll carry it."
They found seats together; Philip, amused, tried to extract from Burgess something besides the trite and obvious servant's patter—something that might signify some possibility of a latent independence—the germ of aspiration. And extracted nothing. Burgess had not changed, had not developed. His ways were Philip's ways; his loftier flights mounted no higher toward infinity than the fashions prevailing in the year 1862, and their suitability to his master's ultimate requirements.
For his regiment, for its welfare, its hopes, its glory, he apparently cared nothing; nor did he appear to consider the part he had borne in its fluctuating fortunes anything to be proud of.
Penned with the others in the brush field, he had done stolidly what his superiors demanded of him; and it presently came out that the only anxiety that assailed him was when, in the smoke of the tangled thickets, he missed his late master.
"Well, what do you propose to do after the regiment is mustered out?" inquired Philip curiously.
"Wait on you, sir."
"Don't you want to do anything else?"
"No, sir."'
Philip looked at him, smiling.