“But I wasn’t, so it couldn’t have been rash. If I had been hurt, then you might have called it rash; but as I wasn’t, you can only call it fearless. But I don’t want to talk of myself, but of my ferocious old governor, who stood there on the platform, bloody, dusty, smoky, bound, bandaged and plastered, and looking, for all the world, like a disreputable old prize-fighter that had been considerably damaged in the ring.” “But you met him—oh, you met him as the daughter of a hero should meet her wounded father!” exclaimed Erminie with enthusiasm. “Which means that I wept over the old boy, and set him to weeping, and made a melting scene among all those soldiers. Not _much_ I didn’t. I took him by his whole arm, and turned him round and round until I had inspected him well, and then I said: “Oh, you miserable looking old pap. I don’t believe you came from Gettysburg or any other gallant battle-field. I believe you are fresh from a fireman’s free fight, or an election riot, where the pretensions of rival candidates are canvassed with cudgels. Where have you been, and what doing, to get yourself so dirty, and knocked into such an old cocked hat?” “And my old governor laughed, and said that he had been in a dusty place; that it was very dusty at Gettysburg; and that shot and shell were flying thick and fast. “I begged him to have the largest bath-tub in the house filled with hot water, and to rub himself down from head to foot with soft soap and hard towels, and put himself in soak for three hours; and I gave him the suit of clean under-clothes that I had brought along in my carpet bag. “And though in general paps are very disobedient persons, yet he promised to obey me, and he kept his word so far as to take a good bath, while I got up a good dinner for him; and I must confess that he didn’t look half so badly when he joined me at the dinner table, freshly washed and newly clothed, with all the smuts and stains I had taken for bruises and gashes cleansed away. But if all heroes have such heroic appetites as my heroic pap, I don’t wonder famine so often follows war.” Britomarte laughed, but Erminie said: “Men who are fighting cannot stop to feed. He must have fasted long.” “Long! I should think he had fasted forty days and nights. I told him so; and he answered that he felt ‘hollow.’ And I couldn’t help saying as I carved the second fowl for him: “Pap, I know next to nothing about anatomy and physiology, but from certain indications I should judge you to be hollow all the way down to the soles of your boots.” “Oh, Elfie! how could you?” exclaimed Erminie. “Have you no veneration at all?”