"No'm, I ain't cole! It's—it's" (sobbing)—"it's Mornin'-Glory!"
"Not sick? If she is, I'll—"
"No'm, Mornin'-Glory ain't never goin' to be sick no mo'."
"Oh, Mrs. Jones! Not dead!"
"Them pickets kep' me awake all las' night, an' I got up in the night an' went out to see how Mornin'-Glory was gettin' on, an' she—she—she look at me jus' the same! An' I slep' soun' till after sun-up, and when I got my pail an' went out to milk her—thar was her horns an hufs!"
The poor woman broke down completely in telling me the ghastly story. "Oh, how wicked! How was it possible to take her off and nobody hear?" I exclaimed in great wrath.
"I don't know, Mis' Pryor, nothin' but what I tells you. Talk to me 'bout Yankees! Soldiers is soldiers, an' when you say that, you jus' as well say devils is devils."
My other poor neighbor had long been a pensioner on my father. She was a forlorn widow with many children, hopeless and helpless. My father was in despair when she turned up "to git away from the shellin'." She found a small untenanted house near us and set up an establishment which was supported altogether by boarding an occasional soldier on sick leave, and taking his rations as her pay. Like Mrs. Jones, she was a frequent visitor to my fireside. One morning, after some unusual demonstrations of coy shyness, she blurted out: "I knows fo' I begin what you goin' to say! You goin' to tell me Ma'y Ann is a fool, an' I won't say you ain't in the rights of it."
"Well, what is Mary Ann's folly? I thought she had grown up to be a sensible girl."
"Sensible! Ma'y Ann! Them pretty gals is never sensible! No'm. Melissy Jane is the sensible one o' my chillun. I tole Ma'y Ann she didn't have nothin' fitten to be ma'ied in, an' she up an' say she know Mis' Pryor ain' goin' to let one o' her pa's chu'ch people git ma'ied in rags."