“With pleasure,” he said, dismounting, and leading his horse through the gateway and across the shrubbery to the trees.
“Celia! Celia!” called the boy, running up the veranda steps. “He is here! Please hurry, because he’s going to have a battle!”
She came slowly, pale and lovely in her black gown, and held out her hand.
“There is a battle going on all around us, isn’t there?” she asked. “That is what all this dreadful uproar means?”
“Yes,” he said; “there is trouble on the other side of those hills.”
“Do you think there will be fighting here?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She motioned him to a veranda chair, then seated herself. “What shall we do?” she asked calmly. “I am not alarmed—but my grandfather is bedridden, and my brother is a child. Is it safe to stay?”
The bandmaster looked at her helplessly.
“I don’t know,” he repeated—“I don’t know what to say. Nobody seems to understand what is happening; we in the regiment are never told anything; we know nothing except what passes under our eyes.” He broke off suddenly; the situation, her loneliness, the impending danger, appalled him.