"I will send you the papers. You will see the news there," said the doctor.
"But what is it?"
"You would not rest if I began upon the subject. It would take a good while to tell it all."
"But what is the position of affairs?"
"Sherman is in Georgia. Grant is in Virginia. There has been, and there is, some stout fighting on hand."
"Sherman and Grant," said mamma. "Where are my people, doctor?"
"Opposed to them. They do not find the way exactly open," the doctor answered.
"Hard fighting, you said. How did it result?"
"Nothing is decided yet - except that the Yankees can fight," said the doctor, with a slight smile. And mamma said no more. But I took courage, and she took gloom. The papers came, a bundle of them, reaching back over several dates; giving details of the battles of the Wilderness and of Sherman's operations in the South. Mamma studied and studied, and interrupted her dinner, to study. I took the sheets as they fell from her hand and looked - for the lists of the wounded. They were long enough, but they did not hold what I was looking for. Mamma broke out at last with an earnest expression of thanksgiving that Sedgwick was killed.
"Why, mamma?" I said in some horror.