“What if George should need them?” kept suggesting itself to her as she worked industriously on, hoping that if he did, some one of the rolls she was winding might come to him, or better yet, if he could only have the bit of soft linen she had brought herself,—a piece of her own clothing, and bearing on it her maiden name, Annie Howard. He would be sure to know it, she said, it was written so plainly with indelible ink, and it would make him feel so glad. But there might be other Annie Howards, it was not an uncommon name, was suggested next to her, as she tore the linen in strips, and quick as thought, her hand sought the pocket of her dress for the pencil which she knew was there. Glancing around to see that no one observed her, she touched the pencil to her lips and wrote after the name, “It’s _your_ Annie, George. Try to believe I’m there. Rockland, April, 1861.” There were big tear-drops on that bit of linen, but Annie brushed them away, and went on with her rolling, just as Widow Simms called her attention to Rose Mather, as mentioned several pages back. Annie could not account for it to herself, but ever since Rose’s arrival at Rockland, she had felt a strange inexplicable interest in the fashionable belle; an interest prompted by something more than mere curiosity, and now that there was an opportunity of seeing her without being herself seen, she straightened up and smoothing the soft braids of her pale brown hair, waited for the entrance of the little lady, who, with her pink hat set jauntily on her chestnut curls, and her rich fur collar buttoned gracefully over her handsome cloth cloak, tripped into the room, doing much by her sunny smile and pleasant manner to disarm the ladies of their recent prejudice against her. She was nothing but a child, they reflected; a spoiled, petted child; she would improve as she grow older, and came more in contact with the sharp corners of the world, so those who had the honor of her acquaintance, received her with the familiar deference, if we may be allowed the expression, which had always marked their manner toward William Mather’s bride. Rose was too much accustomed to society to be at all disconcerted by the hundred pair of eyes turned scrutinizingly toward her. Indeed, she rather enjoyed being looked at, and she tossed the coarse garments about with a pretty playfulness, saying that “since the ladies had called upon her she had thought better of it, and made up her mind to martyr herself one afternoon at least, and benefit the soldiers. To be sure there wasn’t much she could do. She might hold yarn for somebody to wind, she supposed, but she couldn’t knit, and she didn’t want to sew on such ugly, scratchy stuff as those flannel shirts, but if somebody would thread her needle, and fix it all right, she’d try what she could do on a pair of drawers.”