pinned around her waist, and disclosing a petticoat scrupulously clean, but patched and mended with so many different patterns and colors that the original ground was lost, and none could tell whether it had been red or black, buff or blue.  Between Aunt Betsy and Bell the most amicable feeling had existed ever since the older lady had told the younger how all the summer long she had been drying fruit, “thimble-berries, blue-berries and huckleberries” for the soldiers, and how she was now drying peaches for Willard Buxton—­once their hired man.  These she should tie up in a salt bag, and put in the next box sent by the society of which she seemed to be head and front, “kind of fust directress,” she said, and Bell was interested at once, for among the soldiers down by the Potomac was one who carried with him the whole of Bell Cameron’s heart; and who for a few days had tarried at just such a dwelling as the farmhouse, writing back to her such pleasant descriptions of it, with its fresh grass and shadowy trees, that she had longed to be there too.  So it was through this page of romance and love that Bell looked at the farmhouse and its occupants, preferring good Aunt Betsy because she seemed the most interested in the soldiers, working as soon as breakfast was over upon the peaches, and kindly furnishing her best check apron, together with pan and knife for Bell, who offered her assistance, notwithstanding Wilford’s warning that the fruit would stain her hands, and his advice that she had better be putting up her things for going home.

“She was not going that day,” she said, point-blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much faster than her hands, which pared so slowly and cut away so much of the juicy pulp, besides making so frequent journeys to her mouth, that Aunt Betsy looked in alarm at the rapidly disappearing fruit, wishing to herself that “Miss Cameron had not listed.”

But Miss Cameron had enlisted, and so had Bob, or rather he had gone to do his duty, and as she worked, she repeated to Helen the particulars of his going, telling how, when the war first broke out, and Sumter was bombarded, Rob, who, from long association with Southern men at West Point, had imbibed many of their ideas, was very sympathetic with the rebelling States, gaining the cognomen of a secessionist, and once actually thinking of casting in his lot with that side rather than the other.  But the remembrance of a little incident saved him, she said.  The remembrance of a queer old lady whom he met in the cars, and who, at parting, held her wrinkled hand above his head in benediction, charging him not to go against the flag, and promising her prayers for his safety if found on the side of the Union.