Betty herself shared
their rations of cornmeal and bacon, jealously guarding her small supplies
of milk and eggs for Mrs. Ambler and the two old ladies. "It makes no
difference what I eat," she would assure protesting Mammy Riah. "I am so
strong, you see, and besides I really like Aunt Floretta's ashcakes."
Spring and summer passed, with the ripened vegetables which Hosea had
planted in the garden, and the long winter brought with it the old daily
struggle to make the slim barrels of meal last until the next harvesting.
It was in this year that the four women at Uplands followed the Major's
lead and invested their united fortune in Confederate bonds. "We will rise
or fall with the government," Mrs. Ambler had said with her gentle
authority. "Since we have given it our best, let it take all freely."
"Surely money is of no matter," Betty had answered, lavishly disregardful
of worldly goods. "Do you think we might give our jewels, too? I have
grandma's pearls hidden beneath the floor, you know."
"If need be--let us wait, dear," replied her mother, who, grave and pallid
as a ghost, would eat nothing that, by any chance, could be made to reach
the army.
"I do not want it, my child, there are so many hungrier than I," she would
say when Betty brought her dainty little trays from the pantry.
"But I am hungry for you, mamma--take it for my sake," the girl would beg,
on the point of tears. "You are starving, that is it--and yet it does not
feed the army.
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