My, but it was
changed times! and you ought to have seen the way the old lady
cocked her head in the air and made a splendid black silk dress of
loot, which she wore every evening with the officers and rattled
all over with jet. But it didn't turn her head the least bit, like
for a time the boys feared it might, and she was twice as good to
us as she had been before. We had a pull at headquarters now, and
she had a heart that big that it could hold the officers and us,
too--and more in the draw.
The tide had turned her way when she needed it most, for, tough as
she was, she could not have long gone on like she had been. She
had worn down very thin, and was like a shadow of the old lady I
remembered in Oakland, California, and kind of sunk in around the
eyes, and I don't believe Benny would have known her, had he risen
from the grave; and, when anybody joked with her about it, and
said: "Take it easy, Ma'am, you owe it to the battery to be
keerful," she'd answer she had enlisted for the term of the war,
and looked to peg out the day peace was proclaimed.
"Then I'll be off to join Benny," she'd say, "and the rest of the
battery, in heaven!"
There was getting to be a good deal of a crowd up there--that is,
if the other place hadn't yanked them in--and some of the boys
found a lot of comfort in her way of thinking.
"A boy as dies for his country isn't going to be bothered about
passing in," she would say, with a click of her teeth and that
sure way of hers like she KNEW.
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