“Is it, indeed?  I have a friend who doesn’t think so.”

“No, because she considers your tongue part of herself now.”

“I don’t see why she should; she has enough of her own.”

“In wooing-time no woman ever had enough tongue.”

“How changed you are from what you were at Acredale, Jack!  I never heard you talk so deep and bookish.”

“I had no need at Acredale, Dick.  There I was a boy—­lived as a boy, romped as a boy, and loved boyish things.  But a man ripens swiftly in war—­you yourself have.  You are no longer the mischief-maker and tom-boy that terrified your family and set the gossips agog in the dear old village.  Mind broadens swiftly in war.  That one dreadful day at Bull Run enlarged my faculties, or trained them rather, as much as a course in college.  Something very serious came into my life that day.  It had its effect on you too.  It fairly revolutionized Vint; we may not have exactly put away boyishness and boyish things—­please God, I hope to be a boy many a year yet—­but we have been made to think as men, act as men, and realize that there are consequences and responsibilities in life such as we could not have realized in ten years in time of peace.”

Dick listened during this solemn comedy of immature doctrinal induction, his eyes dilating with wonder and admiration.  Jack, in the role of sage, delighted him, and he straightway confided to Rosa that he couldn’t understand how any girl could love another man while Jack was to be had.

“He’s so clever, so brave, so manly.  He knows so much, and yet never takes the trouble to let any one see it.  Ah, Rosa, I wish I were like Jack!”

“I think Jack’s very nice, but I know somebody that’s much nicer,” Rosa replied, busy with a rough material that was plainly intended for the Southern warriors.

“Ah! but if you really knew all about Jack, you wouldn’t look at anybody else,” Dick cried, pensively, tangling his long legs in the young girl’s work.

“There, you clumsy fellow; you’ve ruined this seam, and I must get this work done before noon.  We’re all going to the provost prison to take garments to the recruits.  You may come if you’ll be very good and help me with these supplies.”

“May I?  I will sew on the buttons.  Oh, you think I can’t?  Just give me a needle.”  And sure enough Dick, gravely arming himself from the store in Rosa’s “catch-all,” set to fastening the big buttons as composedly as if he had been brought up in a tailor’s shop.  It was in this sartorial industry that Jack, coming in, presently discovered the pair.

“You’ve turned Dick into a seamstress, have you, Rosalind?  You’re an amazing little magician.  Dick’s sewing heretofore has been of the common boy-sort—­wild oats.”

“No, Mr. Jack, I’m no magician.  Dick is a very sensible fellow, and, like Richelieu in the play, he ekes out the lion’s skin with the fox’s.”