Family Pride; Or, Purified by SufferingHolmes, Mary Jane
General
Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction; Dime novels
descriptions of it, with its fresh grass and shadowy trees, that she had
longed to be there too. So it was through this page of romance and love
that Bell looked at the farmhouse and its occupants, preferring good
Aunt Betsy because she seemed the most interested in the soldiers,
working as soon as breakfast was over upon the peaches, and kindly
furnishing her best check apron, together with pan and knife for Bell,
who offered her assistance, notwithstanding Wilford's warning that the
fruit would stain her hands, and his advice that she had better be
putting up her things for going home.
"She was not going that day," she said, point-blank, and as Katy too
had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and
taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly
into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much faster
than her hands, which pared so slowly and cut away so much of the juicy
pulp, besides making so frequent journeys to her mouth, that Aunt Betsy
looked in alarm at the rapidly disappearing fruit, wishing to herself
that "Miss Cameron had not listed."
But Miss Cameron had enlisted, and so had Bob, or rather he had gone to
do his duty, and as she worked, she repeated to Helen the particulars of
his going, telling how, when the war first broke out, and Sumter was
bombarded, Rob, who, from long association with Southern men at West
Point, had imbibed many of their ideas, was very sympathetic with the
rebelling States, gaining the cognomen of a secessionist, and once
actually thinking of casting in his lot with that side rather than the
other. But the remembrance of a little incident saved him, she said. The
remembrance of a queer old lady whom he met in the cars, and who, at
parting, held her wrinkled hand above his head in benediction, charging
him not to go against the flag, and promising her prayers for his safety
if found on the side of the Union.
"I wish you could hear Bob tell the story, the funny part, I mean,"
she continued, narrating, as well as she could, the particulars of
Lieutenant Bob's meeting with Aunt Betsy, who, as the story progressed
and she recognized herself in the queer old Yankee woman, who shook
hands with the conductor and was going to law about a sheep pasture,
dropped her head lower and lower over her pan of peaches, while a
scarlet flush spread itself all over her thin face, but changed into a
grayish white as Bell concluded with "Bob says the memory of that hand
lifted above his head haunted him day and night, during the period of
his uncertainty, and was at last the means of saving him from treachery
to his country."
"Thank God!" came involuntarily from Aunt Betsy's quivering lips, and,
looking up, Bell saw the great tears running down her cheeks, tears
which she wiped away with her arm, while she said faintly: "That old
woman, who made a fool of herself in the cars, was me!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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