He was a blue-eyed young Northerner, and for
three days after that he had set a guard upon the portico at Uplands. The
memory of the small white-faced girl, with her big army pistol and the
blazing eyes haunted him from that hour until Appomattox, when he heaved a
sigh of relief and dismissed it from his thoughts. "She would have shot the
rascal in another second," he said afterward, "and, by George, I wish she
had."
The Governor's wine cellar was emptied long ago, the rare old wine flowing
from broken casks across the hall.
"What does it matter?" Mrs. Ambler had asked wearily, watching the red
stream drip upon the portico. "What is wine when our soldiers are starving
for bread? And besides, war lives off the soil, as your father used to
say."
Betty lifted her skirts and stepped over the bright puddles, glancing
disdainfully after the Hessian stragglers, who went singing down the drive.
"I hope their officers will get them," she remarked vindictively, "and the
next time they offer us a guard, I shall accept him for good and all, if he
happens to have been born on American soil. I don't mind Yankees so
much--you can usually quiet them with the molasses jug--but these
foreigners are awful. From a Hessian or a renegade Virginian, good Lord
deliver us."
"Some of them have kind hearts," remarked Mrs. Ambler, wonderingly. "I
don't see how they can bear to come down to fight us. The Major met General
McClellan, you know, and he admitted afterwards that he shouldn't have
known from his manner that he was not a Southern gentleman.
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