"Very likely," I said, "but somehow I shall not very much mind!"
"Oh, this is too utterly, utterly dreadful!" said the lady as she left the room.
The next day the ration was changed. Fresh beef, canned vegetables, bread, and coffee were issued to all the women of Petersburg. Mrs. Hartsuff came daily to see me. "Not that George has gotten over it!" she declared. "His feelings are constantly hurt here. And as to myself, that old black Irene I found in the kitchen at Centre Hill just walks over me!"
"Why don't you dismiss her?"
"Dismiss Irene? I should like to see anybody dismiss Irene! Besides, she cooks divinely. But I can't enter her kitchen! 'Dear me,' I said one day, 'what a dirty kitchen!' 'Ladies don't nuvver come in kitchens,' she told me. Evidently I am not a lady! And I once asked her please to be careful of the gold studs the General was apt to leave in his cuffs 'Gold studs!' she repeated with a sniff, 'my master wore diamond studs, an' I never see cuffs loose from shirts before in all my born days. 'Cose the wind'll blow 'em away! I can't be 'sponsible for no shirt that's in three or four pieces.'"
All the good citizens of Petersburg who had been driven away by the shelling now began to return, and among them came the owners of the house I was occupying. I was told that I could, on no account, be safe at Cottage Farm without a guard. For this, too, I must make personal request. So my little body-guard and I wended our way to interview General Hartsuff.
We found him in the noble mansion of the Bollings. At the entrance two fine greyhounds in marble had for many years guarded the incoming and outgoing of the Bolling family. In the rear there was a long veranda with lofty pillars, and beyond, extensive grounds set with well-grown evergreens, and with that princely tree, the magnolia grandiflora, now in bloom. White marble statues and marble seats were scattered through the grounds. A rustic staircase led down to a conservatory, built low for the better care of the plants. The mansion stood on an eminence sloping sharply in front, and a legend-haunted subterranean passage led from the dwelling to the street, the entrance to which was covered by shrubs and vines.
As I stood in the veranda waiting for audience, a young officer called my attention to the beauty of the grounds and the magnificence of the flowering plants in tubs on the veranda. "I should like," he said, "to fight it out on this line all summer."
I thought of the family driven from their own, and was wicked enough to tell him:—
"That would be most unfortunate for you. This place is very sickly in summer—deadly, in fact. Typhoid fever is fatal in this section."