Her hands were outstretched to comfort, but Betty turned
gently away from her and went up the narrow staircase to the bare little
room where the girls slept together.
Alone within the four white walls she moved breathlessly to and fro like a
woodland creature that has been entrapped. At the moment she was telling
herself that she wanted to keep onward with the army; then her courage
would have fluttered upward like the flags. It was not the sound of the
cannon that she dreaded, nor the sight of blood--these would have nerved
her as they nerved the generations at her back--but the folded hands and
the terrible patience that are the woman's share of a war. The old fighting
blood was in her veins--she was as much the child of her father as a son
could have been--and yet while the great world over there was filled with
noise she was told to go into her room and pray. Pray! Why, a man might
pray with his musket in his hand, that was worth while.
In the adjoining room she saw her mother sitting in a square of sunlight
with her open Bible on her knees.
"Oh, speak, mamma!" she called half angrily. "Move, do anything but sit so
still. I can't bear it!" She caught her breath sharply, for with her words
a low sound like distant thunder filled the room and the little street
outside. As she clung with both hands to the window it seemed to her that a
gray haze had fallen over the sunny valley. "Some one is dead," she said
almost calmly, "that killed how many?"
The room stifled her and she ran hurriedly down into the street, where a
few startled women and old men had rushed at the first roll of the cannon.
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