"Well, the first soldiers wanted to kill THEM, Budge." "Then they was ALL bad, to want to kill each other." "Oh, no, they weren't; there were a great many real good men on both sides." Poor Budge looked sadly puzzled, as he had an excellent right to do, since the wisest and best men are sorely perplexed by the nature of warlike feeling. "Both parties of soldiers were on horseback," I continued, "and they were near each other, and when they saw each other they made their horses run fast, and the bugles blew, and the soldiers all took their swords out to kill each other with, when just then a little boy, who had been out in the woods to pick berries for his mama, tried to run across the road, and caught his toe some way, and fell down, and cried. Then somebody hallooed 'Halt!' very loud, and all the horses on one side stopped, and then somebody else hallooed 'Halt!' and a lot of bugles blew, and every horse on the other; side stopped, and one soldier jumped off his horse, and picked up the little boy--he was only about as big as you, Budge--and tried to comfort him; and then a soldier from the other side came up to look at him, and then more soldiers came from both sides to look at him; and when he got better and walked home, the soldiers all rode away, because they didn't feel like fighting just then." "Oh, Uncle Harry! I think it was an AWFUL good soldier that got off his horse to take care of that poor little boy." "Do you, Budge? Who do you think it was?" "I dunno." "It was your papa." "Oh--h--h--h--h!" If Tom could have but seen the expression upon his boy's face as he prolonged this exclamation, his loss of one of the grandest chances a cavalry officer ever had would not have seemed so great to him as it had done for years. He seemed to take in the story in all its bearings, and his great eyes grew in depth as they took on the far-away look which seemed too earnest for the strength of an earthly being to support. But Toddie,--he who a fond mama thought endowed with art sense,--Toddie had throughout my recital the air of a man who was musing on some affair of his own, and Budge's exclamation had hardly died away, when Toddie commenced to wave aloud an extravaganza wholly his own. "When _I_ was a soldier," he remarked, very gravely, "I had a coat an' a hat on, an' a muff an' a little knake [Footnote: Snake: tippet.] wound my neck to keep me warm, an' it wained, an' hailed, an' 'tormed, an' I felt bad, so I whallowed a sword an' burned me all down dead." "And how did you get here?" I asked, with interest proportioned to the importance of Toddie's last clause. "Oh, I got up from the burn-down dead, an' COMED right here. An' I want my dolly's k'adle." Oh persistent little dragon! If you were of age, what a fortune you might make in business! "Uncle Harry, I wish my papa would come home right away," said Budge. "Why, Budge?" "I want to love him for bein' so good to that poor little boy in the war."