“I know this is contraband goods, and, according to your ideas, treasonable. Will you confiscate it?” quietly holding it out again.
“Not I! but some one else might. You are not prudent to wear that openly.”
And I was so ashamed of myself for hurting his feelings that I made amends in rather too warm terms, I am afraid, considering that he didn’t know I was married and a privileged character.
“You are traveling in the wrong direction, _I_ think, Miss Duncan,” he ventured to say after awhile. “You shouldn’t leave the North and go south now.”
“I--I shouldn’t think you would receive the attention there just now that is your due. You are young and fond of society, I imagine. And--there are so few beaux in the South now--I shouldn’t think you would like that.”
“I mean that I wish you would stay up North where it is pleasanter. It’s so--uncomfortable down South. You are so young, you see, you ought to have a chance to enjoy life a little. I--I wish you were up here--and I could add a little to your happiness. I--I mean,” catching a glance which warned him, “it is must be dull for you in the South--no beaux--no nothing.”
“All the beaux are in the field,” I retorted, “where they ought to be. I wouldn’t have a beau who wasn’t, and if I were a Northern girl I wouldn’t have a man who didn’t wear a uniform--though, I think, it ought to be gray.”
“I expect you have a sweetheart down South whom you expect to see when you get home. That is why your heart has been so set on getting back.”
“If I had a sweetheart down South I couldn’t see him when I got back home, for he would be in the field.”
“So, your sweetheart is a Southern soldier?” wistfully.
“I wouldn’t have a sweetheart who wasn’t a soldier--a Southern soldier.”
In the other side of my watch I had pasted a small picture of Dan in uniform. I opened this side and held it out to my companion.
He looked at it long and hard. “A good-looking fellow,” he said, “and I have no doubt a gallant soldier. If I ever meet him in battle--he will be safe from _my_ bullet.”
Behind our wagon all the way from Harper’s Ferry had come a party equipped like ourselves. They were Jews, and, as we were informed, were prisoners of the United States. They had an ambulance like ours, a baggage wagon like ours, and a similar escort of five infantry perched on trunks. Their escort who rode inside, however, was not so attractive as ours. We felt and expressed much commiseration for them because they were prisoners--“those poor Jews,” we called them.