With a soldier’s readiness he opened his coat and began to tear a strip from his shirt from which to make a bandage.  But his small daughter interrupted him with a vigorous protest.

“Wait!” she cried, with a face full of alarm at the willful destruction of his garment.  “Don’t do that.  Here!  You can take it off my petticoat.”

“That petticoat,” her father laughed, with the first real mirth she had heard for many weeks.  “That poor little petticoat wouldn’t make an arm bandage for Susan Jemima.  Now—­up with your hoofie and let’s play I’m a surgeon and you’re a brave soldier who has fought in every battle since we first made the Yanks skedaddle at Bull Run.”

With the painful foot securely bandaged the little girl gave herself up to thought, emerging from her study at last to ask what was an all-important question.

“Daddy—­”

“Yes?”

“Do you reckon, by the time the war is over, we could call Susan Jemima a vet’ran?”

“I should say we could,” the father agreed heartily, without the symptom of a smile.  “Hasn’t she grown bald in the service?  And hasn’t she almost lost an arm—­or is it a leg I see dangling so terribly?  I’ll tell you what we’ll do!  We’ll give her an honorable discharge—­and decorate her.  How’s that?”

“Oh, fine!” she cried, clapping her hands with delight at the fantasy.  “And we’ll get that Yankee man to write her a pass just like mine.  Do you hear that, Cap’n Susan,” she crooned to the doll, unconscious of the convulsion of silent amusement beside her.  “When we get to Richmon’—­if we ever do get there—­I’m going to make you a uniform!”

Then she turned to her father with a little sigh, for the miles seemed very long.

“How far is it to Richmon’, Daddy-man?” she said.

“Just about twelve miles,” her father answered.  “But they’re real old country miles, I’m sorry to say.”

“Can we get to it to-night?”

The simple little question made the man’s heart ache.  What wouldn’t he give for an hour of Roger once more—­or Belle—­or Lightfoot!  Anything—­even one of the old plantation mules would do if he could only perch her up on its back and take her into Richmond like a lady and not like the daughter of poor white trash, tramping, poverty stricken, along a dusty road.

“No, dear, not to-night,” he sighed.  “We’ve come a long way and we’re both tired.  So when it gets dark we’ll curl up somewhere in the nice, sweet woods and take a snooze, just like camping out.  And then—­in the morning, when the old sun comes sneaking up through the trees, we’ll fool him!  We won’t wait till he can make it hot, but we’ll get right up with the birds and the squirrels and we’ll just run right along.  And by twelve o’clock we’ll be in Richmond—­where they have good things to eat.  So there you are—­all mapped out.  Only now we’ll have a belt supper.”

“A belt supper?” queried the child curiously, though her face brightened at the thought of any kind of supper, made out of belts or any other thing.