“May I get up?” she asked; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on,—­“I have been selfish, Sue; I will try to be better now; I won’t run away from my battle.  Oh, how glad I am he didn’t run away!  It is dreadful now, dreadful!  Perhaps, if I had to choose if he should have run away or—­or this, I should have wanted him to run,—­I’m afraid I should.  But I am glad now.  If God wanted him, I’m glad he went from the front ranks.  Oh, those poor women whose husbands ran away, and were killed, too!”

She seemed to be so comforted by that one thought!  It was a strange trait in the little creature; I could not quite fathom it.

After this, she came down-stairs and went about among us, busying herself in various little ways.  She never went to the grave-yard; but whenever she was a little tired, I was sure to find her sitting in her room with her eyes on that cap and coat and sword.  Letters of condolence poured in, but she would not read them or answer them, and they all fell into my hands.  I could not wonder; for, of all cruel conventionalities, visits and letters of condolence seem to me the most cruel.  If friends can be useful in lifting off the little painful cares that throng in the house of death till its presence is banished, let them go and do their work quietly and cheerfully; but to make a call or write a note, to measure your sorrow and express theirs, seems to me on a par with pulling a wounded man’s bandages off and probing his hurt, to hear him cry out and hear yourself say how bad it must be!

Laura Lane was admitted, for Frank’s sake, as she had been his closest and dearest relative.  The day she came, Josey had a severe headache, and looked wretchedly.  Laura was shocked, and showed it so obviously, that, had there been any real cause for her alarm, I should have turned her out of the room without ceremony, almost before she was fairly in it.  As soon as she left, Josey looked at me and smiled.

“Laura thinks I am going to die,” said she; “but I’m not.  If I could, I wouldn’t, Sue; for poor father and mother want me, and so will the soldiers by-and-by.”  A weary, heart-breaking look quivered in her face as she went on, half whispering,—­“But I should—­I should like to see him!”

In September she went away.  I had expected it ever since she spoke of the soldiers needing her.  Mrs. Bowen went to the sea-side for her annual asthma.  Mr. Bowen went with Josephine to Washington.  There, by some talismanic influence, she got admission to the hospitals, though she was very pretty, and under thirty.  I think perhaps her pale face and widow’s-dress, and her sad, quiet manner, were her secret of success.  She worked here like a sprite; nothing daunted or disgusted her.  She followed the army to Yorktown, and nursed on the transport-ships.  One man said, I was told, that it was “jes’ like havin’ an apple-tree blow raound, to see that Mis’ Addison; she was so kinder cheery an’ pooty, an’ knew sech a sight abaout nussin’, it did a feller lots of good only to look at her chirpin’ abaout.”