Daisy in the Field | Page 6

and talked to each other of the items that seemed now to touch Thorold's and my future as well as the future of the country. We talked, - I could not help it; and yet often I would as lief not; the subjects were not quieting.
The first thing, was the going to Washington of Christian and his class. He wrote to me about it. They went in haste and zeal; waiting for nothing; losing not a train; going by night. Some in civilian's dress; some in cadet clothes, with the black stripe torn off the leg; all eager for their work. What work? It was peaceful enough work just at first. Thorold and others were set to drill the new citizen soldiers who had come in, answering to the President's proclamation, and who knew simply nothing of the business they were to be wanted for, if wanted at all. It was likely they would have something to do! Already a second proclamation from the President had called for a second supply of men, to serve for three years, if the war was not sooner ended. Seamen for the navy also, in like manner.
For three years or the war! It went to my heart, that requisition. It looked so terribly in earnest. And so unhopeful. I wondered, those days, how people could live that did not know how to pray; when every one had, or might have, a treasure at stake in this fierce game that was playing. I have often since felt the same wonder.
I do not know how studies and the usual forms of school recitations went on; but they did go on; smoothly, I suppose. I even recollect that mine went on successfully. With my double or treble motive for desiring success, I had also a reason for prizing and remembering the attainment. But my head was on graver matters, all the time. Would the rebels attack, Washington? it was constantly threatened. Would fighting actually become the common news of the land? The answer to this second query began to be sounded audibly. It was before May was over, that Ellsworth's soldiers took possession of Alexandria, and he was killed. That stirred people at the time; it looks a very little thing now. Alexandria! how I remembered driving through it one grey morning, on one of my Southern journeys; the dull little place, that looked as if it had fallen asleep some hundred or two years ago and never waked up. Now it was waked up with rifle shots; but its slave pen was emptied. I was glad of that. And Thorold was safe in Washington, drilling raw soldiers, in the saddle all day, and very happy, he wrote me. I had begun to be uneasy about his writing to me. It was without leave from my father and mother, and the leave I knew could not be obtained; it would follow that the indulgence must be given up. I knew it must. I looked that necessity in the face. A correspondence, such a correspondence, carried on without their knowing of it, must be an impossibility for me. I intended to tell Christian so, and stop the letters, before I should go abroad. My difficulties were becoming daily more and more clear, and looking more and more unmanageable. I wondered sometimes whither I was drifting; for guide or choose my course I could not. I had got into the current by no agency and with no fault of my own. To get out of the current - perhaps that might not be till life and I should go out together. So I was a somewhat sober and diligent student those closing weeks of the term; and yet, very happy, for Christian loved me. It was a new, sweet, strange, elixir of life.
The term was almost out, when I was called to the parlour one day to see Mrs. Sandford. All winter I had not seen her; she had not been in New York. I think she was unaffectedly glad to see me; somehow my presence was pleasant to her.
"Out of school!" she exclaimed, after a few greetings had passed. "Almost out of school. A woman, Daisy. My dear, I never see you but I am struck with the change in you. Don't change any more! you are just right."
I laughed and asked her, what was the change in me? I had not grown taller.
"No -" said Mrs. Sandford - "I don't know that you have; but your figure is improved, and you have the air of being taller, Daisy. I never saw you looking so well. My dear, what work you are going to do now! now that you are out of the 'elements.' And by the by - what are you going to do, when school closes