"Who knows what may happen?" cried Doctor Jim. "You stiff-necked rebels may experience a change of heart, and then where's your war?"
"Barbara, sweet baggage," said Doctor John, wagging his forefinger at her in the way that even now, at her nineteen years, seemed to her as irresistibly funny as she had thought it when a child, "I cannot let this anxiety oppress your tender young spirit. Set your heart at rest. If there be war, Jim Pigeon may go a-soldiering and get shot as full of holes as a colander, and I'll do my duty by staying at home and looking after his patients. There'll be a chance of some of them getting well, then! I've never yet had a fair chance to save Jim Pigeon's patients. I won't desert a lovely maiden in distress, to seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth!"
"How can you lie so shamelessly, John Pigeon?" demanded Doctor Jim. "I'll lay you a barrel of Madeira you'll be leaning against the butt of a musket before I am!"
"Done!" said Doctor John.
"I think you are both perfectly horrid!" cried Barbara.
CHAPTER XXIII.
That day of the news was a boundary day. It set sharp limit to Barbara's years of calm. From that day events came quickly, change pressed hard on change, and no day, for her, was quite like its predecessor. A veering of the current had snatched her from her shining eddy, and swept her forth into the tide of life.
On the morning following the dinner, while still alive to a sense of menace in the air, Barbara received a letter from her uncle. As she read it, her eyes sparkled, her heart bounded. Then, as she passed it to Mistress Mehitable, and Mistress Mehitable took it with cheerful interest, her heart sank. She felt a pang of self-reproach, because she found herself willing to go away and leave her aunt uncompanioned in the solitude of Westings House. Glenowen had undertaken certain business, in the way of searching records and examining titles, which was driving him at once to New York, and bade fair, he said, to keep him there for upwards of a year. He wanted Barbara to go with him. And Barbara's pulses bounded. There, she thought, were the lights and the dances, the maskings and the music, the crossing of swords and wits, the gallants and the compliments and the triumphs, which she was longing to taste. Mistress Mehitable's face grew grave as she read the letter. It grew pale as she looked up and saw by Barbara's face the hunger in her heart. Mistress Mehitable had a vision of what Westings House would be, emptied of the wilful, flashing, vivid, restless spirit which for the past few years had been its life. But she was unselfish. She would not say a word to lessen Barbara's delight.
"It will be lovely for you, dear!" said she, with hearty sympathy. "You are just at the age, too, when it will mean most to you, and be of most value to you. I am so glad, dear!"