“Perhaps I was foolish to decline the offer, and for a moment I was horribly tempted to accept it, especially when, by doing so, I could to some degree escape my ‘thorn in the flesh,’ who, notwithstanding that he does me many a kindness, annoys me excessively. But I could not feel that I deserved that post. It ought to belong to some one who had never spurned the Old Flag, and so I stood firm, and suggested as a substitute that other Simms chap from Rockland, _Hophni_, or _Phineas_, or _Eli_,—hanged if I know what his name is. Any way, he is that crabbed widow’s son, that used to pucker her mouth so when she saw ‘_that young reb_ of a Carleton,’ and snatch away her gown for fear it should hit me. I reckon he’ll get the office, with its twelve hundred a year, which he can use for his mother’s support. One of her sons, you know, is married, and as good as lost to her; while that boy Isaac is not long for this world. Prison life at Richmond did the business for him, or I’m mistaken, so let Eli be lieutenant, and James Carleton only a private. Do you think I did right, and will that paragon of yours, Mistress Graham, think so, too?” This was what Jimmie wrote to Rose after he had been gone for three or four weeks, and what Rose, with her usual impetuous thoughtlessness, read to her mother and Annie, who were both in her room when the letter came. Annie had made an attempt to leave, but Rose had insisted that there could be no secret in Jimmie’s letter. If there was, she would skip it, she said, and she read on, stumbling dreadfully, and mispronouncing words, for Jimmie’s handwriting was never very plain: and this letter, written with a soft lead pencil, with a bit of slate-stone for a table, was his very worst. She made out, however, that he had declined the office of second lieutenant because he thought he did not deserve it; that he had named Eli Simms as a fitter person for it than himself, and that he had called the widow a “crab-apple,” or something like it. All this was _very_ clear; and, after exclaiming against Jimmie’s morbid sense of justice in one breath, and pronouncing him “perfectly splendid” in another, she kept on till she reached the “paragon,” which she rendered “Pequot,” making the sentence read, “Will that Pequot of yours, Mistress Graham, think I did right?” “What did he call me?” Annie exclaimed, her face turning very white, as she leaned toward Rose, who, startled at her vehemence, tried again to make out the word, which was strangely distorted, from the fact that just as Jimmie was writing it, his shadow, Bill, had struck him familiarly upon the shoulder, saying, with a laugh, “Writin’ to your gal, I s’pose? Give her Bill Baker’s regrets.”