“You want to go, Frank, and I thought you would rather be married to me first; so I came to find you and tell you I would.”

Frank sprang to his feet like a shot man; I cried; Josephine stood looking at us quite steadily, her head a little bent toward me, her eyes calm, but very wide open; and Mr. Bowen gave an audible grunt.  I suppose the right thing for Frank to have done in any well-regulated novel would have been to fall on his knees and call her all sorts of names; but people never do—­that is, any people that I know—­just what the gentlemen in novels do; so he walked off and looked out of the window.  To my aid came the goddess of slang.  I stopped snuffling directly.

“Josephine,” said I, solemnly, “you are a brick!”

“Well, I should think so!” said Mr. Bowen, slightly sarcastic.

Josey laughed very softly.  Frank came back from the window, and then the three went off together, she holding by her father’s arm, Frank on his other side.  I could not but look after them as I stood in the hall-door, and then I came back and sat down to read the paper Frank had flung on the floor when he came in.  It diverted my mind enough from myself to enable me to sleep; for I was burning with self-disgust to think of my cowardice.  I, a grown woman, supposed to be more than ordinarily strong-minded by some people, fairly shamed and routed by a girl Laura Lane called “Dora”!

In the morning, Frank came directly after breakfast.  He had found his tongue now, certainly,—­for words seemed noway to satisfy him, talking of Josephine; and presently she came, too, as brave and bright as ever, sewing busily on a long housewife for Frank; and after her, Mrs. Bowen, making a huge pin-ball in red, white, and blue, and full of the trunk she was packing for Frank to carry, to be filled with raspberry-jam, hard gingerbread, old brandy, clove-cordial, guava-jelly, strong peppermints, quinine, black cake, cod-liver oil, horehound-candy, Brandreth’s pills, damson-leather, and cherry-pectoral, packed in with flannel and cotton bandages, lint, lancets, old linen, and cambric handkerchiefs.

I could not help laughing, and was about to remonstrate, when Frank shook his head at me from behind her.  He said afterward he let her go on that way, because it kept her from crying over Josephine.  As for the trunk, he should give it to Miss Dix as soon as ever he reached Washington.

In a week, Frank had got his commission as captain of a company in a volunteer regiment; he went into camp at Dartford, our chief town, and set to work in earnest at tactics and drill.  The Bowens also went to Dartford, and the last week in May came back for Josey’s wedding.  I am a superstitious creature,—­most women are,—­and it went to my heart to have them married in May; but I did not say so, for it seemed imperative, as the regiment were to leave for Washington in June, early.