I bowed my head. “And Bobby--if there is ever anything I can do for your child, you will let me know?” “Good-by,” he said, “it is good to meet old friends and find that neither time nor war changes them. Good-by--we shall see you again some day.” Isabelle was very happy when I told her that Dick was safe, and now that it was over she regretted having sent me into such dangers and tribulations. “I ought to have gone,” she said. “I could have taken the oath, you see, if they had asked me. And then, well, papa is known there, but--I couldn’t ask papa to help Dick. He wouldn’t have done anything for him.” CHAPTER XXII WITH DAN AT CHARLOTTESVILLE Milicent always came as a soul comes. The day after we got the batch of letters the door opened softly, and there she stood, holding Bobby by the hand. She had come so quietly that we did not know it until she stood in our midst. But Bobby was a veritable piece of flesh and blood. As soon as he saw it was grandma and auntie, he made a bound for us, and overwhelmed us with his noisy and affectionate greetings, while his mother submitted to being loved and kissed, and in her quiet way loved and kissed back again. Then she told us how she had come from Norfolk to Petersburg. It was a long, dreary trip. “I went on a flag-of-truce train to Suffolk. Dr. Wright’s family were on the train, and I spent the night with them. Bobby burned his throat at supper by swallowing tea too hot for him, and he did not rest well in the early part of the night and slept late the next day, and I was very anxious about him. This, and the difficulty in getting a conveyance, kept me at Dr. Wright’s until the afternoon. By that time I had secured a mule-cart to take me to Ivor Station, on the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. Ivor, you know, is not more than twenty-five miles from Suffolk by the direct route, but the route we had to take for safety, as far as the Yankees and mud were concerned, was longer, and our one mule went slowly. “The first afternoon we traveled till late in the night. Bobby would insist on driving the mule, and the driver humored him. In spite of the pain in his throat, he stood up against my knee and held the lines until, poor little tired fellow! he went to sleep holding them. I drew him on to my lap, covered him up, and we went on, the old negro, old mule, and baby all asleep. At last we stopped at a farmhouse to feed the mule. The woman who lived there asked me in. I laid Bobby down on her bed, dropped across it, and in five minutes was asleep myself. I don’t know how many other people slept in that bed that night, but I know that the old woman, Bobby, and I slept in it. When I woke up it was several hours after daylight. Our breakfast the next morning was a typical Confederate breakfast. My hostess gave me a drink made of parched wheat and corn which had been ground, a glass of milk, and some corn bread and bacon, and I enjoyed the meal and paid her cheerfully.