"Horace," said Mr. Clifford, smiling, "it will be some years before you can be a soldier: why do you begin now to eat dry bread?"
"I want to get used to it, sir."
"That indeed!" said Mr. Clifford, with a good-natured laugh, which made Horace wince a little. "But the eating of dry bread is only a small part of the soldier's tough times, my boy. Soldiers have to sleep on the hard ground, with knapsacks for pillows; they have to march, through wet and dry, with heavy muskets, which make their arms ache."
"Look here, Barby," said Horace, that evening; "I want a knapsack, to learn to be a soldier with. If I have 'tough times' now, I'll get used to it. Can't you find me a carpet-bag, Barby?"
"Carpet-bag? And what for a thing is that?" said Barbara, rousing from a nap, and beginning to click her knitting-needles. "Here I was asleep again. Now, if I did keep working in the kitchen, I could sit up just what time I wants to; but when I sits down, I goes to sleep right off."
And Barbara went on knitting, putting the yarn over the needle with her left hand, after the German fashion.
"But the carpet-bag, Barby: there's a black one 'some place,' in the trunk-closet or up-attic. Now, Barby, you know I helped pick those quails yesterday."
"Yes, yes, dear, when I gets my eyes open."
"I would sleep out doors, but ma says I'd get cold; so I'll lie on the floor in the bathing-room. O, Barby, I'll sleep like a trooper!"
But Horace was a little mistaken. A hard, unyielding floor makes a poor bed; and when, at the same time, one's neck is almost put out of joint by a carpet-bag stuffed with newspaper, it is not easy to go to sleep.