“I’m thinking of April,” Harriot went on. “She used to be the nicest, sweetest girl you ever knew and now—she’s a perfect idiot. Yes, she _is_, a perfect idiot. You just be warned by April and never have a love affair if you can help it.” “But perhaps you can’t help it,” Dorothea suggested with a smile. “Well, I mean to,” Harriot insisted. “I shall never fall in love. I’ve had my warning. It’s awful! And I like Lee Hendon, too; even if he is a coward—though some people say he isn’t at all.” “Who is he? Tell me about him, won’t you?” asked Dorothea, thinking perhaps to find an explanation of April’s actions. “There isn’t much to tell,” Harriot replied. “April’s so terribly pretty that of course she’s had lots and lots of beaux, and I don’t think any one noticed much about Lee Hendon—at least I didn’t, ’cause he’s been like a brother to us all his life and—well, when all the fuss came, there just couldn’t be any other explanation except that April liked him better than the others.” “What fuss?” asked Dorothea. “Because he didn’t enlist when the war broke out,” Harriot explained. “Is he an Abolitionist?” Dorothea questioned. “Oh, my, no! It would be almost better if he were. That would be a good reason for the way he’s acting—not just ’cause he’s afraid, as ’most everybody says. No, it isn’t because he’s an Abolitionist. He and his mother have three plantations and lots and lots of servants. At first, you know, a man who had twenty slaves didn’t have to enlist—though of course _gentlemen_ didn’t wait to be made. My father and Hal went, right off; and so did ’most every one else. Then after a while the news went ’round that Lee Hendon hadn’t gone and wasn’t going. Oh, there was a lot of talk, and he sort of kept away as much as he could, till finally the girls sent him a Secession bonnet and a crinoline and skirt.” “And then what did he do?” “Oh, I don’t know,” Harriot answered. “Nothing, I reckon. But Dr. Hardesty told everybody that it was Lee’s mother who kept him at home. That she was mighty sick and if he went away she’d surely die. The doctor said we ought to admire Lee for not deserting his mother.” “I should have thought that would have satisfied April,” Dorothea suggested. “Nothing would satisfy her except that he should go and fight,” answered Harriot. “But he wouldn’t, and we heard he had paid a substitute three hundred dollars. That was the last straw. It’s that sort of thing makes people say this is a ‘Rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,’ and April cut him, on the steps of the church one Sunday morning, and she hasn’t spoken of him since. All the same she keeps thinking about him, or else why is she so queer?” “I didn’t think she was queer,” Dorothea remarked after a moment’s pause.