CHAPTER XXI

THE LITTLE LADY AGAIN

Dad looked up, and his gaze through the window fell on Jimmie. The boy had paused in his flight across the field--almost at the threshold of the cottage.

His grandfather passed out to see what was delaying him.

On the porch Dad halted, staring into the hot haze of sunshine and dust that rolled up from the fields.

In the shade of a magnolia, Battle Jimmie was squatting on all fours, pulling a bayonet out of the ground.

“What are you doing?” asked Dad.

The boy looked up half guiltily.

“I saw this bayonet stuck here,” he explained. “And--”

“And your father is waiting for a nurse,” reproved Dad.

“I know. I’m sorry. But I thought this would be nice to take along. I’ve always wanted one. There isn’t any great hurry about father. He isn’t badly hurt. I knew that as soon as I looked at him. I’ve seen enough of them to know. I guess he’s mostly scared.”

“Jimmie!”

“When I saw him it seemed like I was almost a kid again. You don’t suppose he’ll make me go back to school again, do you, Dad? I--I wonder who used to own this bayonet, and why he threw it away, whoever he was? Or if he had no more use for bayonets and things.”

The boy fell silent there in the acrid haze, looking into unnamable distances, seeing in his mind’s eye the ceaseless columns of sternly marching men.

Dad looked at the bayonet. On its haft there was a dried spot--a spot that had once been red and wet--

It was the jack-knife that war gives its children. Dad felt a queer sensation in the corners of his eyes, and, surreptitiously wiping them, muttered something about “this blamed hay-fever,” and pretended to be very brusk and ordered, with an abominably poor imitation of sarcasm:

“When--when you get through with all the important duties that seem to be worrying you so, you skedaddle across the fields and see if you can find me that nurse or surgeon for your father. Get out! Keep a running! It isn’t like you to loaf like this. And I’m surprised at you. And--remember to ask for a Mrs. Sessions, as I told you. It is an off-chance. But in war, off-chances are the kind that happen. Now, scurry. Stop wasting time.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jimmie. “I guess it’s the sight of father that’s somehow taken all the ginger out of me. I’m going.”

Boyish memories of the dread men he had seen marching--marching--marching--faded from Jimmie’s face. He sprang up to attention, his eyes bright and keen, his thin, brown little hand at his temple in a cocky salute, while he cried:

“As you order, captain!”

He started off across lots.

He was not a small boy going on an errand. He was a well-trained and extremely weary and unconsciously pathetic little soldier who had seen death ride down the ranks of drawn battle. His reaction had, boylike, taken the form of mischievous perverseness.

He was very tired. He made his short legs carry him on and on, though he wanted to drop; while his eyes swept every thicket for possible Confederate stragglers or skirmishers along his way.

As he reached the main road running back to the town and the distant Federal lines, he saw a movement in the sumac-bushes, now glittering with the fire of approaching autumn.

What was it? He couldn’t afford to get shot or captured now. He had to bring a nurse. Dad had told him to.

Jimmie instantly dropped to the ground and lay without movement.

He could almost see the stern, quiet, deadly face of the foeman who must be hidden there in that nearest bush, perhaps already aware of him and taking his aim--perhaps taking aim right at his breast as he lay there so quietly. But he did not move. He waited.

Then the sumac-bushes parted, and out from between the roots peered the furry, eager face of a dog; impudent, inquiring, with his ragged left ear flapping gayly over his eyes while he stared indignantly at the silent figure in the roadside ditch.

That eye seemed to be volubly remarking:

“What the dickens are you doing there? Trying to fool a poor dog that ain’t either Johnnie Reb or Yank; but just a plain, ornery, scared mongrel, boy’s dog as can hunt you out gophers?”

At least, that’s what Jimmie would have sworn the forlorn mongrel said as he peered out from the sumacs.

“Howdy, dog? Where y’ going?” Jimmie inquired, sitting up.

The dog himself said nothing but “Y-e-e-e-e-e-h.” But his tail, going flippety-flip, flippety-flip against the brush, announced its entire friendliness.

The answer was much the same as before, while the dog looked still more friendly and whined a little. He cocked his ears up over his head.

“Think you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, don’t you, with your cocked hat made out of ears? All right; that’s your name, then--let’s see?--Emperor Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, Esquire. I give you that name all for your own. Got a master? Well, come on then. Gotta hurry. Come on, boy!” He whistled.

And down the road started the boy afresh, cheered by companionship. And the dog, which seemed to take it for granted that he had a new owner, followed.

As they drew up to the line of sentries about the hospital bivouac, panting with haste, a sentry stopped them, mumbling: “Wh’ go th’r’?”

“Aw--y’ know me!” snapped Jimmie. “Lemme by. I’m in a hurry.”

“Sure I know you,” grinned the sentry. “You’re Gen’ral McClellan. But who’s that four-footed gent with you? He must be a gen’ral, too--ain’t he? I notice he’s a little gray--all of him as ain’t brown or red or yaller or just plain dirt-colored.”

Jimmie drew himself up to the dread height of his full four foot seven and stalked by, meekly followed by Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, Esq., while the sentry scoffed after the twain:

“He’s a well-bred trick, all right; he’s got more kinds o’ breedin’ in him than all the dogs I ever see. Them forepaws look to me like South Boston bull, but I guess his second toe-nail on his lift hind foot is St. Bernard.”

Across the camp trailed a couple of Q. M. wagons drawn by tired mules, which had come pounding down the turnpike laden with nurses. The lieutenant-surgeon in charge cantered beside them on a bay mare. Running up to him, Jimmie bawled out in a commanding treble:

“Halt! Beg pardon, loot’nant, but--”

“Well, well, well, well, well!” snapped the surgeon, drawing rein sharply. “What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?”

“Jimminy crickets! Zif once saying it wouldn’t be enough!” complained Jimmie, down inside himself; while aloud he begged, quickly:

“Captain James Dadd sent me for a nurse for an awful dangerous wounded man he’s looking after down there in the cottage off to the right from the road.”

“Captain Dadd, eh? But who’re you?”

“Battle Jimmie, sir.”

“Oh, yes! Sure! I’ve heard of you. All right. I’ll detail--”

“I was to ask,” piped Jimmie, belatedly remembering--“I was to ask if there’s a Mrs. Sessions in the nurse corps. If there is, please--”

“Me?” suggested a pleasant voice from the foremost wagon of nurses which had stopped during the colloquy.

The officer and Jimmie looked to see, peering out from under the canvas cover, a rosy-cheeked, delicate-skinned, smiling little old lady--a sweet and silvery-voiced little old lady--with sleek white hair shining under the edge of her nurse’s cap.

“Eh?” snapped the officer.

“I know Captain Dadd, and I’m going to help him,” said the old lady in nurse’s uniform, sweetly but decisively, starting to climb out of the wagon. “Especially since he’s bothered to ask for me.”

While the newly appointed officer stared in wrathy silence, wondering just what the military regulations for volunteer army surgeons said about the proper method of coercing nurse-ladies almost old enough to be one’s mother, the old lady climbed briskly down from the wagon, one trim foot, in a neat slipper with a coquettish silver buckle, on the wheel hub.

She seized Jimmie’s arm, patted Napoleon on the head, and started trotting off without another look back, while the surgeon wheeled, shouted “Forward!” and moved off.

“Do you know, my dear, I fancy you must be Jimmie Brinton,” laughed the old lady, panting a little with the fast walk into which she had led Jimmie.

“Yessum,” wondered Jimmie, looking up adoringly at the rosy-cheeked old lady.

Somehow she seemed to mean to him gingerbread cookies--and long stories and sleepy Sunday afternoons when the hammock swung among June roses--and a motherly breast on which to whisper out his griefs and disillusions.

Somehow the halt while he had investigated the grim bayonet rusted with a dead man’s blood, and the hot afternoon, and the pattering footsteps of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte behind him, and the comfortable mother-face of the plump and gentle old lady trotting beside him--they all blurred together, and he knew that he was very tired and wanted to be taken care of.

For a second he was quite sure that he was going to faint with the heat, confessing all the burden of the reaction and his weariness; that he was going to lie down in the shade and just be a tired small boy nursed by a kindly old lady.

Then he straightened himself up and bit his lip till it stung and clutched her soft arm protectingly, while he mumbled:

“Yessum, I’m Jimmie--Battle Jimmie, they call me--and I’ll watch out for you, I will, if any of them blamed Rebs try to get funny with you, ma’am!”

“Oh, you _dear_ boy!” she caroled in a voice that sounded to him like a running brook and a mother-song and a laughing girl, all at once.

And, without ever for a second ceasing her puffing little trot, she leaned over and kissed his tangle of soft red hair.

“I know your grandfather, my dear, and I’m _sure_ you’ll take care of me, because he says you’re a chip of the old block--and I know it, now I’ve seen you.”

“You know--Dad?” he asked in wonder.

“Yes--and now I know Dad’s dear chum and grandson, too,” she answered, laughing. “I’m the Mrs. Sessions you were sent for. At least, I used to be when I knew your grandfather. But for the last month I’ve been Volunteer Nurse Sessions, of the Army of the Potomac. So, you see, we are all three soldiers together: you and I and--Dad!”