"Come, look at the soldiers," I said, as I saw a shadow in the General's smile and heard a sigh when the music, almost under our very windows, signaled the hour for dress-parade.

The shadowy ghost of despair vanished with my entreaties, as we stood at the window and watched the soldiers, keeping time with them to step and tune outwardly, while hiding the muffled sound within, each playing we were enjoying it, without one marring thought of the crumpled-browed past, trying to fool each other till we really fooled ourselves. It was with thankfulness that I saw my Soldier watch with unfeigned interest the maneuvers of the troops day after day, and pleasantly welcome reveille and tattoo. Our baby learned to march almost before he walked.

While we were enjoying our congenial surroundings and each other, spite of poverty, fears for the future, and grief for the past, my husband became very ill. In the crisis of his illness, when he required all my attention, our baby was seized with croup. The kind old Englishman, recommended by my good friends, was very attentive, but failed to inspire me with my wonted faith. The chief reason, I think, must have been that he was not called "Doctor," but "Mister." For two weeks he came once, and sometimes twice a day, going first to see and bring me news of the baby, who had been kindly taken by our friends to their home to be cared for. I was a source of unending amusement, an unsolvable mystery to the English doctor, though we were very good friends.

During all this long illness I never once stopped to consider the cost of anything, whether it were food, medicines or delicacies of any kind, if prescribed or suggested, but purchased regardless of expense. When the danger was past, and our board bill was sent up, I counted over our little store and found there was not enough left to meet it.

My husband was still too ill to be annoyed or troubled about anything, and with the bill hidden away in my pocket, I was making a plan of battle and maneuvering how I could fight my way out of the intrenchments, when he noticed that I was looking pale, and suggested that I go out for a little fresh air.

Eagerly taking advantage of the excuse thus offered, I put on my bonnet and went down to the office and took from my box in the safe an old-fashioned set of emeralds and, asking the proprietor to direct me to the most reliable jeweler and to send some one to sit with my husband until my return, went out.

I had had very little experience in buying of merchants, and none whatever in selling to them, but I feigned great wisdom and dignity as I told the young man who stepped forward to wait upon me that my business was with the head of the firm. He took me back to an inner office, where an old man with grizzly-gray hair and a very moist countenance was looking intently, through something which very much resembled a napkin-ring screwed into his right eye, at some jewels lying on a tray before him. He wore his teeth on the outside of his mouth, and his upper lip was so drawn, in the intensity of his look, as to be almost hidden under his over-reaching nose. His face, too, was wrinkled up into a thousand gullies in his concentration upon his work.

"We don't hemploy young women 'ere," he said, looking up and frowning as he suddenly became aware of my presence.

"I came," I explained, taking out my emeralds and handing them to him, "to ask you if you would not, please, sir, kindly buy some of these stones from me, or, at least, advance me some money on them."

"This is not a pawnbroker's shop, heither, mum," he replied, as he carefully examined the jewels, and then, suddenly popping the napkin-ring out of his eye, turned both of the piercing little gray twinklers upon me and said:

"Where did you get these hemeralds from, miss?"

"I was born with them, sir," I said indignantly.

Either from my appearance, or for some other cause, he became suddenly suspicious, and not only would not purchase them of me, but refused to let me have them till I could prove my right to them. I was too young and inexperienced to be anything but furious, and the bitter, scalding tears that anger sometimes unlocks to relieve poor woman's outraged feelings, were still falling fast when I reached the hotel with the clerk whom the jeweler had sent back with me that I might prove by the proprietor my ownership of the jewels with which I was born.

He, in his sympathy, shared my anger and, after expressing his sincere regret that I should have been subjected to such an indignity, advised, as he snatched the case from the clerk with a withering look of scorn translated into more emphatic language, that I should look carefully over them to be sure that neither this hireling nor his master had abstracted any of the stones, for his experience had been that suspicion was born of guilt.

As he again locked up my emeralds in his safe he kindly asked how much money I needed and begged that in the future I would permit him to advance for me if I should need any, and furthermore, "as to the board and expenses here," he said, "Mr. Edwards and I will arrange all that when he is well—entirely well." My friends would have been glad to advance me the money but I did not wish to trouble them.

Through the goodness of God and the skill of my kind physician, my loved ones were spared to me, and one day, some time after they were well, as I was reading the paper to my husband, I chanced across an advertisement for a teacher of Latin in Miss McIntosh's school. The professor was going abroad and wanted some one to take his place during his absence. The chuckle of delight which I involuntarily gave as I read it, provoked from my Soldier the remark that I was keeping something very good all to myself. I slyly determined that this little suspicion should be verified and that I would make an application at once for the position; then, if I should fail, I alone would suffer from the disappointment. So, just as soon as I could arrange it, I donned my best clothes, assumed a most dignified mien, went to the number advertised and asked for the professor.

I was shown into the primmest of parlors—the kind of room one feels so utterly alone in, without even the suspicion of a spirit around to keep your own spirit company. Each piece of furniture was placed with mathematical precision, and all was ghost-proof. The proprietress, who came in response to my call, seemed put up in much the same order. She was tall and angular, and her grizzly-red hair was arranged in three large puffs (like fortifications, I thought) on each side of her long, thin face, high cheek-bones, Roman nose, and eyes crowded up together under gold-rimmed spectacles. As she held my card in her hand and looked at me with a narrow-gauge gaze, piercing my inmost thoughts, and with that discouraging "Well!-what-can-I-do-for-you?" expression, I felt all my courage going. My necessities aroused me from my cowardice, and I said as bravely as I could:

"I have had the good fortune to read your advertisement, madam, in the paper this morning, and have come in answer to it. May I see the professor?"

Looking curiously at my card and then over her glasses at me, she said:

"The advertisement was for a teacher, not for a pupil."

"I am perfectly aware of that," I answered, "and came in response, to offer the professor my services as a teacher."

A most quizzical expression bunched up the corners of her mouth and wiggled across her little colorless eyes as she said:

"I will send the professor down to you."

Looking over her spectacles again, as if for a verification of her first impression of me, she left the room.

Returning after a little while, she said:

"The professor requested me to ask if you would be so good as to come up into the recitation room."

I saw as soon as I had entered that a description of me had preceded my coming, and not a very flattering one, either, I judged, from the faces of the professor and the pupils.

The class consisted of fourteen young ladies, all of them apparently older than I was. The professor finished the sentence he was translating on the board, rubbed it out, wiped his hands on the cloth, replaced it, came forward and was duly presented by Miss McIntosh, who remained in the room. He had a pleasant, round, smooth face, a bald head and large gray eyes, was short and stout, with a sympathetic, cultured voice and manner.

"Miss McIntosh tells me you came in reply to my advertisement. I have been forced to advertise in order to save time, as my going abroad is unexpected and brooks no delay."

"I am very glad you had no option but to advertise, else it might not have been my good fortune to know of, and respond to, your wants, sir."

"And you have really come to apply for the position?" he asked.

"I have, sir."

The expression on Miss McIntosh's face, the nudging and suppressed titter among the pupils which this answer brought forth was not calculated to lessen my embarrassment.

"Have you had any experience in teaching?"

"No, sir," I said.

"May I ask where you were educated?"

"I was graduated at Lynchburg College."

"Is that in England?"

"Oh, no, sir," said I, with astonishment at his ignorance, and then recollecting myself just as I was about to inform him that Lynchburg was the fifth town in population in Virginia, was on the south bank of the James River, one hundred and sixteen miles from the capital of the State, and within view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Peaks of Otter, I stopped short, embarrassed by my imprudence. The professor, taking no notice of my confusion, went on to say:

"And so you were graduated there? My class here has just finished CÆsar. Do you remember how CÆsar commences?"

"Yes, sir," I said, and repeated: "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres."

"You have the Continental pronunciation, I see."

He gave me several sentences to translate; then an ode from Horace and some selections from Catullus and Tibullus. By this time the pupils were silent, and Miss McIntosh's expression was changed.

He then asked me to write and parse a sentence, which I did, saying sotto voce as he took the chalk from me:

"That was a catch question."

"Please translate and parse this," said he, without noticing my aside, and he wrote in Latin, "The late President of the United States said 'nobody is hurt——'"

Before he wrote any further, instead of translating, I looked up at him and said:

"But, oh, sir! somebody was hurt."

Quickly he cleared the board, put down the cloth, wiped his hands, turned his face to me and offering his hand, said, not to my surprise, because I had faith in prayer, but rather to that of Miss McIntosh and the young ladies:

"I will engage you, Mrs. Edwards, and will be responsible for you."

We went down to the parlor, and I gave him the names of the only friends I had in Montreal of whom he could make inquiries regarding me. The next day I gave my first lesson to the class. I became very fond of them all and, after my embarrassment of the first few days, got along very well with them.

My Soldier was curious to know where I went every day, but, knowing it gave me great pleasure to be thus mysterious, humored me and asked no questions.

My first month's salary was spent in part payment on an overcoat for him, and only Our Father and the angels know what joy filled my heart, that with the work of my hands I could give him comfort. Then my secret was out.

I was sorry when the cold weather came. The snows not only put an end to the military reviews, but covered up the beautiful green. There were very few diversions for us, but I was just as happy as it was possible for me to be. Indeed, those were the very happiest days of my whole life and I was almost sorry when General Rufus Ingalls wrote to my Soldier, inclosing a kind personal letter from General Grant, together with the following official assurance of his safety:

"HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES

Washington, D. C, March 12th, 1866.

Geo. E. Pickett, a paroled officer of the Southern Army, is exempt from arrest by Military Authorities, except directed by the President of the United States, Secretary of War or from these Hd. Qrs. so long as he observes the conditions of his parole.

The restriction requiring paroled officers to remain at their homes is removed in this case, and he, Pickett, will be allowed to travel unmolested throughout the United States.

U. S. Grant,
Lt. Gen."

General Grant also wrote that it had not been at all necessary for us to go away in the first place, and that the terms of his cartel should have been respected, even though it had necessitated another declaration of war.

We stopped in New York en route to Virginia, expecting to remain there only three or four days, but we found that our board had been paid in advance for two weeks, that a carriage had been put at our service for that length of time, and that in our box was a pack of wine-cards marked "Paid." To this day I do not know how many people's guests we were, for a great many of my Soldier's old army friends were there at the time, and they all vied with each other in making us happy.