“Oh, don’t always talk nonsense, Kate.  You’re worse than Jack Sprague.  He doesn’t seem to have a serious thought in his head from daylight till bedtime.”

“Perhaps he keeps all his sober thoughts for the night, to give them good company.”

“No, but do say what I ought to do.”

“You ought to study to make yourself tolerable to your sister, dear, and agreeable to the other fellows’ sisters.  I have remarked that the young man who does that, keeps out of despondency and other uncomfortable conditions that too much brooding on an empty head brings about.”

“I’d like to know what heart I can have to make myself agreeable to other fellows’ sisters when you are always lampooning me; you delight in making me think I am nobody.”

“Don’t fear, my dear; if that were my delight I should die an old maid, never having known delight, for it would need more force than I can muster to make Wesley Boone, captain U.S.A., anything else than he is—­his father’s pride and his sister’s joy.  No, dear, my delight is to see you gay and open and frank and manly, self-dependent, grateful for the consideration shown you, and recognizant of the constant admonition of your sagacious sister.”

“You talk exactly like the woman in George Sand’s stupid stories; they always remind me of men in petticoats.”

“That’s a weak and strained comparison; not, however, unworthy a soldier.  We always compare, in speech, to strengthen assertion or adorn it, and when we do we compare what is equivocal or vague, with what is well known and usual.  Now, I do not remember any men in petticoats, unless you mean the Orientals, who wear a sort of skirt, and the Scots, who used to wear kilts—­but strictly speaking—­”

“Do, Kate, for Heaven’s sake, be serious for a moment!  I have a chance to escape, no matter how, but I can make my way to our lines without running any great risk.  Now, is it or is it not dishonorable for me to do it?”

“Seriously, Wesley, just now it would be, while Vincent is here, for he is in a sense pledged for you to his superior.  Further, there is no need to hurry.  You are barely recovered.  If you were North you would be in Acredale; if you were, there is no immediate want of your presence in the army.  The articles we see in the Richmond papers every day, copied from Northern journals, show that this new general, McClellan, means to bring a trained, drilled, disciplined army down when he moves.  It took six months to prepare McDowell’s useless mass.  It will certainly take a year to put the million men now arming in shape to fight.  I may be wrong, but at the earliest there can be no movement before late in October.  By that time we shall probably have the problem solved by the Government, and you will go North, having made delightful friends of all this charming family.”

Wesley was even more afraid of Kate’s strong sense of honor than of her biting sarcasm, and he ended the interview without daring to tell her how far he had compromised himself with the secret agents that were surrounding the plantation.  Dick, running down-stairs in his wake, encountered Rosa, with her garden hat covering her like the roof of a disrupted pagoda.  She arrested his stride as he was darting toward the door.