The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 | Page 2

as kind a voice as I could command, about the sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I turned away in a hurry to my work. Somehow, I could not forgive her for troubling my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.
I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's. You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.
As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.
This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,--almost as near as they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.
"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you will send these hounds back to their kennels,--rather, send these gentry back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."
So we all said and thought at the North,--all but a few who had been at the South, and who knew too well how much in earnest it was in its treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of the future,--these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest reciprocal disrespect.
"I don't quite think like you, Auntie, but that is, perhaps, because I was at Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little differently. But no matter,--they must go back all the same. This is my pincushion, is it?"
"Yes, and here are thread and needles. But, Rob, nonsense! I say you will be back in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once they begin that, there will be no fighting. It is like the Chinese, each side trying to frighten the other."
"Perhaps so," said Robert, in an abstracted way. "Let us hope so, at all events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going to Colonel Lunt's a little while; shall I find you up when I come back?"
"Come in, any way, and tell me if you have good news."
I knew what he was going to Colonel Lunt's for. He had talked to me about Percy, and I knew he loved her. If he had not been going away, perhaps he would have waited longer; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readings together, and the walkings and talkings between the two, I thought it most likely she had already consoled herself. As I said before, I had no very great love for her.
Not an hour, not fifteen minutes, when Robert returned. He looked paler than before, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length, with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he said, "I'm a fool to be vexed about it,--let her please herself!"
"It is bad news, Robert!" said I softly, laying my hand on his