"Yes, I suppose so. Good-bye."
James Penhallow sat on the back porch in the after luncheon hour to get with the freshness of October what sunshine the westerning sun was sifting through the red and gold of the maples beyond the garden walls. He was in the undress uniform of the artillery, and still wore the trefoil of the Second Corps. An effort by Ann to remove his soiled army garb and substitute his lay dress caused an outbreak of anger which left him speechless and feeble, and her in an agony of regretful penitence. Josiah, wiser than she, ventured to tell her what had happened once before when his badge of the glorious Second Corps had been missing. "After all, what does it matter?" she said to herself, and made no effort to repair the ragged bullet tear South Mountain left in his jacket, and in which he had at his worst times such childlike pride as in another and well-known general had once amused him.
He was just now in one of his best conditions and was clearly enjoying the pipe he used but rarely. Ann at his feet on the porch-step read aloud to him with indifference to all but the man she now and then looked up to with the loving tenderness his brief betterment fed with illusory hope.
"What's that, Ann?" he exclaimed; "Grant at Chattanooga! That's John's ideal General. Didn't he write about him at—where was it? Oh! Belmont."
"Yes, after Belmont, James."
"When does Mark Rivers go back?"
"To-morrow. He is always so out of spirits here that I am really relieved when he returns to the Sanitary Commission." He made no reply, and she continued her reading.
"Isn't that Leila with Rivers, Ann?"
"Yes. He likes to walk with her."
"So would any man." A faint smile—very rare of late—showed in her pleased upward look at the face—the changed face—she loved.