I could not carry this on, and turned the conversation. But I had to listen to a great deal of the same sort of thing, in which I took no part. It came up every day. I discovered that my mother was using her influence and all her art to induce our two young friends to return home and enter the Southern army. She desired with equal vehemence that Ransom should take the same course; and as they all professed to be strong in the interests and sympathies that moved her, I was a little puzzled to understand why they delayed so long. For they did delay. They talked, but nothing came of it. Still we went on fresh excursions and made new expeditions; spending days of delight on the mountain sides, and days of enchantment in the mountain valleys; and still our party was of the same four. It is true that papa did not at all share mamma's eagerness to have Ransom go; but Ransom did not greatly care for papa's likings; and in the case of the others, I did not see what held them.
The printed news from home we had of course, regularly; and as far as I could without being watched, I studied them. The papers after all were mostly Southern, and so filled with outrageous invective and inflated boasting, that I could not judge anything very certainly, from what they said. Nothing of great importance seemed to be transpiring between the belligerent parties. I supposed that it wanted but some such occurrence or occasion to send off our three young men like a ball from a rifle, straight to the seat of war. Meanwhile we enjoyed ourselves. Others did, and I did also, whenever I could put down fear and lift up hope; and I was young, and that happened to me sometimes. So the weeks ran on.
"I really don't see why I should be in a hurry to plunge myself into that angry confusion of things at home," Hugh Marshall said one day. "It seems to me, they can get through it without my help."
"Well, you are not in a hurry." I answered.
We were out as usual for a day's pleasure among the mountains, and Hugh and I were resting on a sunny bank waiting for the others to come up. We had distanced them.
"What do you think about it?" he said, suddenly drawing himself up from the grass and looking in my face.
"Men do not rule their course by what women think," - I answered.
"No, you are wrong; they do! Sometimes they do," - he said. "I have no mother nor sister to counsel me; only Mrs. Randolph bids me go home and be a soldier; but I would as lieve take advice from you. What would you tell me to do - if I were your brother?"
"I do not tell Ransom anything."
"He is under his mother's tutelage; but I am not. Tell me what to do, Miss Randolph. I am sure your counsel would be good. Do you wish me to go and fight the North, as your mother says I ought?"