"Mama, what did Mrs. Perry have to tell you when she came calling this afternoon?" "Nothing that would interest you, my pet. You haven't touched your potato." "Would it interest Charlotte?" "No." "Is that why you sent her out of the room?" "Yes. Now eat your p----" "Charlotte didn't like being sent out of the room, did she? H'm, mama?" "Isaac, will you speak to that child. I don't know what----" Charlotte's face was scarlet. She knew. Her father would speak sternly to the too inquisitive Carrie. That crafty one would thrust out a moist and quivering nether lip and, with tears dropping into her uneaten potato, snivel, "But I only wanted to know because Charlotte--" and out would come the tale of Charlotte's foot-stamping and face-making. But Isaac Thrift never framed the first chiding sentence; and Carrie got no further than the thrusting out of the lip. For the second time that day news appeared in the form of a neighbor. A man this time, one Abner Rathburn. His news was no mere old-wives' gossip of births and babies. He told it, white-faced. Fort Sumter had been fired on. War! Chicago's interest in the soldiery, up to now, had been confined to that ornamental and gayly caparisoned group known as Colonel Ellsworth's Zouaves. In their brilliant uniforms these gave exhibition drills, flashing through marvelous evolutions learned during evenings of practice in a vacant hall above a little brick store near Rush Street bridge. They had gone on grand tours through the East, as well. The illustrated papers had had their pictures. Now their absurd baggy trousers and their pert little jackets and their brilliant-hued sashes took on a new, grim meaning. Off they trotted, double-quick, to Donelson and death, most of them. Off went the boys of that socially elect group belonging to the Fire Engine Company. Off went brothers, sons, fathers. Off went Jesse Dick from out Hardscrabble way, and fought his brief fight, too, at Donelson, with weapons so unfit and ineffectual as to be little better than toys; and lost. But just before he left, Charlotte, frantic with fear, apprehension and thwarted love publicly did that which branded her forever in the eyes of her straitlaced little world. Or perhaps her little world would have understood and forgiven her had her parents shown any trace of understanding or forgiveness.