Dan detailed a driver and an ambulance for our service and Lieutenant Johnston to act as escort. The morning we started it looked cloudy. Dan tried to dissuade us. I said I had always been a good weather prophet and I didn’t think it would rain. Millie reinforced me.
But when it actually came to telling Dan good-by, I broke down. His threadbare clothes plead with me both ways. I hung around his neck and did so much crying that he got sorry for me and helped me off.
“When I get you a new uniform, Dan--” I sobbed, as he tucked the old blanket shawl about me where I sat in the ambulance.
“Uniform be ----!” growled Dan. Then, seeing my crestfallen look, “I reckon I’ll like it well enough, Nell--when it comes. Good-by, girls. You’re mighty big geese. God bless you! If you change your minds in Petersburg--but, Lord! an earthquake wouldn’t change you! Good-by, my darling--God bless you! I reckon you’ll get along all right.”
The rusty coat-sleeve was out of sight, and I was on my way.
I CROSS THE COUNTRY IN AN AMBULANCE AND THE PAMUNKEY ON A LIGHTER
As we traveled along farther and farther from Dan, I kept on crying softly to myself now and then, turning my face from Milicent. Presently her arm stole around me.
And our astonished driver and escort received orders to turn back toward camp.
“But in a few days,” I sobbed, “Dan--will--be--gone. And you--will be--gone. And I can’t stand that!”
And to the further confusion of escort, driver, and mules, we were turned again.
“Better not to do dat too offen, lessen we won’t git nowhar!” our driver muttered to himself. “Dese mules is clean upsot in dar min’s.”
I was upset in my mind, too. I continued to cry in a helpless, hopeless fashion, and was feeling that nothing on earth could make me more wretched than I already was when it began raining. Lieutenant Johnston, who had the soul of Mark Tapley, prophesied a shower and refused to leave his seat with the driver, but in a little while he was driven inside with us. It rained harder and harder--it poured. The ambulance began to leak and the straw on the floor got wet. Milicent and I huddled together under the old blanket shawl and drew over that a ragged piece of oilcloth; but the rain soaked through. Where Lieutenant Johnston sat there was a steady dripping, bursting now and then into a stream. But he was not to be daunted by discomforts or difficulties. He invented a trough for carrying off the water by making a dent in his broad-brimmed hat, pulling the brim into a point, and sticking it through a rent in the ambulance cover; and he was so merry over it all, and so convinced that things might be far worse and would soon be much better, that we were beginning to laugh at our own expense, when a sullen rushing and roaring reminded us that the worst of our troubles were still before us. We looked out of our ambulance upon the swollen waters of the Pamunkey River.