Ailsa Paige

"W-what?" asked Ailsa.

"The right kind of devil, ma'am. I've been to see him! He wanted my sword; he tried to chew off my shoulder straps; he almost impaled himself on my spurs. By heaven, ma'am, that's a boy for you!"

Ailsa smiled. She knew about babies; implanted in her had always been a perfect madness to possess one.

She and the red-faced Major talked babies. Letty, knowing nothing about babies and not deeply interested, lay back in her seat, watching Ailsa in the dim light of the ceiling lamps. She seemed never to have enough of Ailsa. It had been so from the first.

In Baltimore dawn was breaking when Ailsa awoke at the summons of the major; and he remained devoted to the two nurses of Sainte Ursula, attending to their baggage and transfer across the city, finding seats in the waiting-room already invaded by the officers of several regiments in transit, and finally saw them safely aboard the cars again.

"Good-bye, little ladies," he said cheerily. "If I'm hit, God send one of you to wash my face for me. My card, ladies—if I may be permitted the honour. I'm to be at Fortress Monroe as soon as my command leaves Baltimore."

After he had gone away, Ailsa looked at his card:

A. J. DENISLOW MAJOR, ART., U. S. A

"I thought he was a regular," she said, smiling at Letty. "He's a perfect old dear. Shall we open the parcel and see what he has left us for breakfast?"

There was more milk, more peaches and pears, more bread and butter, and a cold roast chicken; and they made very merry over it, doing the best they could without knife and fork.

They were nearing Washington now. Every little while they passed bodies of troops marching or encamped along the roads; and once they saw a line of army waggons, drab coloured, with yellow canvas tops, moving slowly in clouds of dust.

In the limpid morning light buzzards were already soaring over the green fields; the fresh odour of wild flowers came blowing in at the open car window; butterflies fluttered, wind-driven, helpless.

And now they were passing mounds of freshly turned red earth—long stretches of hillocks banked high and squared at the ends. Hundreds of negroes were at work sodding them; here and there a flag fluttered and a bayonet gleamed.

"I believe all these little hills and ditches have something to do with forts," said Ailsa. "Certainly that great mound must be part of a fort. Do you see the cannon?"

Letty nodded, wide-eyed. And now they were passing soldiers on every road, at every bridge, along every creek bank.

Squads of them, muskets shining, marched briskly along beside the railroad track; sentinels stood at every culvert, every flag house, every water tank and local station past which they rolled without stopping. Acres of white tents flashed into view; houses and negro cabins became thicker; brick houses, too, appeared at intervals, then half-finished blocks fronting the dusty roads, then rows and lines of dwellings, and street after street swarming with negroes and whites. And before they realised it they had arrived.

They descended from the car amid a pandemonium of porters, hackmen, soldiers, newsboys, distracted fellow-passengers, locomotives noisily blowing off steam, baggagemen trundling and slamming trunks about; and stood irresolute and confused.

"Could you direct us to the offices of the Sanitary Commission?" asked Ailsa of a passing soldier wearing the insignia of the hospital service on his sleeve.

"You bet I can, ladies! Are you nurses?"

"Yes," said Ailsa, smiling.

"Bully for you," said the boy; "step right this way, Sanitary. One moment–"

He planted himself before a bawling negro hack driver and began to apply injurious observations to him, followed by terrible threats if he didn't take these "Sanitary Ladies" to the headquarters of the Commission.

"I'm going up that way, too," he ended, "and I'm going to sit on the box with you, and I'll punch your nose off if you charge my Sanitary Ladies more than fifty cents!"

And escorted in this amazing manner, cinder-smeared, hot, rumpled, and very tired, Ailsa Paige and Letty Lynden entered the unspeakably dirty streets of the Capital of their country and turned into the magnificent squalor of Pennsylvania Avenue which lay, flanked by ignoble architecture, straight and wide and hazy under its drifting golden dust from the great unfinished dome of the Capitol to the Corinthian colonnade of the Treasury. Their negro drove slowly; their self-constituted escort, legs crossed, cap over one impish eye, lolled on the box, enjoying the drive.

Past them sped a company of cavalry in blue and yellow, bouncing considerably in their saddles, red faces very dusty under their tightly strapped caps, sabres and canteens jangling like an unexpected avalanche of tin-ware in a demoralised pantry.

"Go it, young 'uns!" cried their soldier escort from the box, waving his hand patronisingly. He also saluted an officer in spectacles as "Bully boy with a glass eye," and later informed another officer in a broad yellow sash that he was "the cheese." All of which painfully mortified the two young nurses of Sainte Ursula, especially when passing the fashionably-dressed throng gathered in front of the Willard and promenading Lafayette Square.

"Oh, dear," said Ailsa, "I suppose he's only a boy, but I didn't know soldiers were permitted to be so impudent. What on earth do all these people think of us?"

Letty, who had been mischievously amused and inclined to enjoy it, looked very grave as the boy, after a particularly outrageous jibe at a highly respectable old gentleman, turned and deliberately winked at his "Sanitary Ladies."

"That's old hoss Cameron," he said. "I made such a mug at the old terrapin that he'll never be able to recognise my face."

"The—the Secretary of War!" gasped Ailsa.

"You very wicked little boy, don't you dare to make another face at anybody!—or I'll—I'll report your conduct to—to the Sanitary Commission!"

"Oh, come!" he said blankly, "don't do that, lady! They'll raise hell with me, if you do. I want to get hunky with the Sanitary boss."

"Then behave yourself!" said Ailsa, furious; "and don't you dare to swear again. Do you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am—I will—I won't, I mean. And if I see that old mudsill, Simon Cameron, I'll take off my cap to him, b'gosh!"

It was an anxious and subdued soldier who showed them the door of the Commission's office, and stood at attention, saluting carefully as the ladies passed him.

"You won't peach, will you?" he whispered loudly, as Ailsa stopped to pay the driver.

"No, I won't—this time," she said, smiling, "if you promise to be a very good soldier hereafter."

He promised fervidly. He happened to be on duty at headquarters, and the fear of the Commission had been driven into him deep. So she and Letty entered the door with a stream of people who evidently had business with the officials of the American Sanitary Commission; and a very amiable young man received them in their turn, took their papers, examined their credentials, nodded smilingly, and directed them to a small boarding-house on F Street, where, he explained, they had better remain until further orders.

There had been some desultory fighting in Virginia, he said, also there were a great many sick soldiers in the army.

Perhaps, added the young man, they would be sent to one of the city hospitals, but the chances were that they would be ordered directly to a field hospital. In that case their transportation would be by army waggon or ambulance, or the Commission might send one of its own mule-drawn conveyances. At any rate, they had better rest and not worry, because as long as the Commission had sent for them, the Commission certainly needed them, and would see that they arrived safely at their destination.

Which turned out to be a perfectly true prophecy; for after a refreshing bath in their boarding-house quarters, and a grateful change of linen, and an early supper, a big, bony cavalryman came clanking to their door, saying that a supply train was leaving for the South, and that an ambulance of the Sanitary Commission was waiting for them in front of the house.

The night was fearfully hot; scarcely a breath of dir stirred as their ambulance creaked put toward the river.

The Long Bridge, flanked by its gate houses, loomed up in the dusk; and:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friends with the countersign."

"Dismount one and advance with the countersign!"

And the Sergeant of cavalry dismounted and moved forward; there was a low murmur; then: "Pass on, Sanitary!"

A few large and very yellow stars looked down from the blackness above; under the wheels the rotten planking and worn girders of the Long Bridge groaned and complained and sagged.

Ailsa, looking out from under the skeleton hood, behind her, saw other waggons following, loaded heavily with hospital supplies and baggage, escorted by the cavalrymen, who rode as though exhausted, yellow trimmed shell jackets unbuttoned exposing sweat-soaked undershirts, caps pushed back on their perspiring heads.

Letty, lying on a mattress, had fallen asleep. Ailsa, scarcely able to breathe in the heavy heat, leaned panting against the framework, watching the darkness.