about it! I have cried my eyes out already; that would do a heap of good now, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, I haven’t time to talk about such petty details. I have some important matters to attend to,” he returned loftily.
“It was you that started it,” said the girl.
Wilfred turned suddenly, his manner at once losing its badly assumed lightness.
“Oh, you needn’t try to fool me,” he reproached her; “I know well enough how you have been carrying on since our engagement was broken off. Half a dozen officers proposing to you – a dozen for all I know.”
“What difference does it make?” she retorted pertly. “I haven’t got to marry them all, have I?”
“Well, it isn’t very nice to go on like that,” said Wilfred with an air into which he in vain sought to infuse a detached, judicial, and indifferent appearance. “Proposals by the wholesale!”
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Caroline, “what’s the use of talking about it to me. They’re the ones that propose, I don’t. How can I help it?”
“Oh,” said Wilfred loftily, “you can help it all right. You helped it with me.”
“Well,” she answered, with a queer look at him, “that was different.”
“And ever since you threw me over – ” he began.
“I didn’t throw you over, you just went over,” she interrupted.
“I went over because you walked off with Major Sillsby that night we were at Drury’s Bluff,” said the boy, “and you encouraged him to propose. You admit it,” he said, as the girl nodded her head.
“Of course I did. I didn’t want him hanging around forever, did I? That’s the only way to finish them off. What do you want me to do – string a placard around my neck, saying, ‘No proposals received here. Apply at the office’? Would that make you feel any better? Well,” she continued, as the boy shrugged his shoulders, “if it doesn’t make any difference to you what I do, it doesn’t even make as much as that to me.”
“Oh, it doesn’t? I think it does, though. You looked as if you enjoyed it pretty well while the Third Virginia was in the city.”
“I should think I did,” said Caroline ecstatically. “I just love every one of them. They are going to fight for us and die for us, and I love them.”
“Why don’t you accept one of them before he dies, then, and have done with it? I suppose it will be one of those smart young fellows with a cavalry uniform.”
“It will be some kind of a uniform, I can tell you that. It won’t be any one that stays in Richmond.”
“Now I see what it was,” said Wilfred, looking at her gloomily. “I had to stay in Richmond, and – ”
The boy choked up and would not finish.
“Well,” said Caroline, “that made a heap of difference. Why, I was the only girl on Franklin Street that didn’t have a – some one she was engaged to – at the front. Just think what it was to be out of it like that! You have no idea how I suffered; besides, it is our duty to help all we can. There aren’t many things a girl can do, but Colonel Woolbridge – he’s one of Morgan’s new men, you know – said that the boys fight twice as well when they have a – sweetheart at home. I couldn’t waste an engagement on – ”
“And is that why you let them all propose to you?” rejoined the youth bitterly.
“Certainly; it didn’t hurt me, and it pleased them. Most of ’em will never come back to try it again, and it is our duty to help all we can.”
“And you really want to help all you can, do you?” asked Wilfred desperately. “Well, if I were to join the army would you help me – that way?”
This was a direct question. It was the argumentum ad feminam with a vengeance. Caroline hesitated. A swift blush overspread her cheek, but she was game to the core.
“Why, of course I would, if there was anything I – could do,” she answered.
“Well, there is something you can do.” He unrolled his package and seized the trousers by the waistband and dangled them before her eyes. “Cut those off,” he said; “they are twice too long. All you have to do is to cut them here and sew up the ends, so that they don’t ravel out.”
Caroline stared at him in great bewilderment. She had expected something quite different.
“Why, they are uniform trousers,” she said finally. “You are going to join the army?” She clapped her hands gleefully. “Give them to me.”
“Hush! don’t talk so loud, for Heaven’s sake,” said Wilfred. “I’ve got a jacket here, too.” He drew out of the parcel a small army jacket, a private soldier’s coat. “It’s nearly a fit. It came from the hospital. Johnny Seldon wore it, but he won’t want it any more, you know, and he was just about my size, only his legs were longer. Well,” he continued, as the girl continued to look at him strangely, “I thought you said you wanted to help me.”
“I certainly do.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” asked Wilfred.
The girl took the trousers and dropped on her knees before him.
“Stand still,” she said, as she measured the trousers from the waistband to the floor.
“This is about the place, isn’t it?”
“Yes, just there.”
“Wait,” she continued, “until I mark it with a pin.”
Wilfred stood quietly until the proper length had been ascertained, and then he assisted Caroline to her feet.
“Do you see any scissors about?” she asked in a businesslike way.
“I don’t believe there are any in the drawing-room, but I can get some from the women sewing over there. Wait a moment.”
“No, don’t,” said the girl; “they would want to know what you wanted with them, and then you would have to tell them.”
“Yes,” said the boy; “and I want to keep this a secret between us.”
“When are you going to wear them?”
“As soon as you get them ready.”
“But your mother – ”
“She knows it. She is going to write to father to-night. She said she would send it by a special messenger, so we ought to get an answer by to-morrow.”
“But if he says no?”
“I am going anyway.”
“Oh, Wilfred, I am so glad. Why, it makes another thing of it,” cried the girl. “When I said that about staying in Richmond, I didn’t know – Oh, I do want to help all I can.”
“You do? Well, then, for Heaven’s sake, be quick about it and cut off those trousers. So
