"It's my advice to you to stay where you are," said her aunt. "We are a lot of imbeciles, all of us. We are better out of the way. It isn't very pleasant to think of the linen closet emptied upon the lawn, and all Yellowcoats tramping over it, but it's better than being suffocated in the smoke, or crushed to death in the crowd." Missy gave her mother a reassuring pressure of the hand, and did not move again. They were indeed a company of useless beings. It was a strange experience to her to be sitting still and thinking the destruction of her household goods a light misfortune. That linen closet, from which the unaccounted-for absence of a pillow-case, would have given her hours of annoyance; the book-cases, where order reigned and where dust never was allowed; the precious china on the dining-room shelves, only moved by her own hands--for all these she had not a thought of anxiety, as she felt her mother's hand in hers. The relief from the fears of that quarter of an hour, while she was making her way through the crowd, had had the effect of making these losses quite unfelt. Subdued, and nervously exhausted too, she sat beside her mother, while the noises gradually subsided on the grounds adjoining. The house was but a stone's throw from the road, and from the Varians' gate, and Miss Varian, with keen ear, sitting on the piazza outside, interpreted the sounds to those within. "Now the women are beginning to go home," she said. "The children are fretting and sleepy; there, that one got a slap. Now the teams, hitched to the trees outside, are unhitched and going away. I wonder how much plunder is being stowed away in the bottom of the wagons. I feel as if my bureau drawers were going off in lots to suit pilferers. There now, the boys and men are beginning to straggle off in pairs. You may be sure there isn't anything to see, if _they_ are going. Talk of the curiosity of women. Men and boys hang on long after _their_ legs give out. Ah! now we're beginning to get toward the end of the entertainment, I should think. I hear Mr. Andrews calling out to the men to clear the grounds, and see that the gates are shut; ah, bang goes the front gate. Well, I should think the poor man might be tired by this time. I should think he might come in and leave things in charge of some of those men who have been working with him."