“Oh, my dear--oh, no, _no_!” she half-sobbed. “You’re a good man. You have loved God, and now, in the day of need, He has not forgotten His servant.” “Emily--” CHAPTER XXIII THE ATTACK “Fa-ather!” rang out a querulous voice from the cottage. “Drat that child!” said Mrs. Sessions almost viciously. “James, I’ll give your boy Joseph an earful. He’s a fretful, suspicious fellow, and if ’twa’n’t for his father and his son I’d nurse him with a field battery, I would.” But she marched into the cottage. She turned Battle Jimmie out to talk to Dad. She changed bandages and tenderly smoothed Joseph’s head, through which the pains were shooting like heat lightning, and on the little old cannon-ball stove in the corner made him toast out of a piece of army hardtack she found and split. Then she sat down beside the cot and straightway began: “Joseph--I s’pose you’re ‘Mr. Brinton’ to them that works for you; but I’m older than you, my dear, besides being your nurse. And I want to tell you while I have the chance that if you weren’t so badly wounded I’d want to take and spank you like a house afire for always being so snippy to that splendid father of yours. Why, if I wasn’t just an old, old woman, I’d be tempted to fall in love with him right here on the spot, I would.” She chuckled comfortably and patted the wounded man’s hand. And right there Joseph Brinton made a mistake which, if duplicated in his business, would have ruined the same beyond recall. We all of us, when we are ill, feel that the world owes us the privilege of being querulous about our pet grievances; and Joseph now lifted his voice and complained: “I can’t understand why you make all this fuss over my father. If it hadn’t been for the trouble I’ve had all these years in caring for him, and the shame he’s so often brought on me--” Emily Sessions changed instantly from a kindly and wise, though easy-going, nurse into a small, almost youthful, spitfire. “D’ you ever see a Newfoundland dog?” she snapped. “Why, yes,” he said wonderingly. “A big, gentle, kind, self-respecting Newfoundland dog?” “Why, yes--I suppose so.” “_Suppose!_ Don’t you suppose me any supposes!” “Well, then, I have. Though why--” “Well, now, tell me,” she demanded, sitting more and more erect, “if you ever saw a terrier pup trying to dig out a gopher and busy as he could be, and lands! no more chance of catching that gopher than if he was a hundred miles away.” “Yes. But--” “Well, then, that’s your father and you. He’s the Newfoundland; and you’re the little rat of a terrier that’s always been so busy with his own self-important concerns that--” “The Confeds are coming!” shrilled a voice at the door. It was Battle Jimmie, outlined against the heat-trembling outdoors. “What?” groaned Emily Sessions. “Squadron of Reb cavalry riding hell-bent-for-leather toward us,” cried Jimmie and disappeared. The old lady ran toward the doorway. “Don’t leave me!” begged the wounded man; but she disappeared.