Douwill she did not know
what they would have done. But Mrs. Douwill was down herself now.
The young man wanted to know about Vashti, but all he could manage
to make his tongue ask was,
"Vashti?"
She could not tell him, she did not know anything about Vashti.
Mrs. Mills used to bring her things sometimes, till she was taken down,
but Vashti had never come to see her; all she knew was that she had been sick
with the others.
That she had been sick awoke in the young man a new tenderness,
the deeper because he had done her an injustice; and he was seized with
a great longing to see her. All his old love seemed suddenly accumulated
in his heart, and he determined to go and see her at once,
as he had not long to stay. He set about his little preparations forthwith,
putting on his old clothes which his mother had kept ever since he went away,
as being more presentable than the old worn and muddy, threadbare uniform,
and brushing his long yellow hair and beard into something like order.
He changed from one coat to the other the little package which
he always carried, thinking that he would show it to her with the hole in it,
which the sharp-shooter's bullet had made that day, and he put her letter
into the same pocket; his heart beating at the sight of her hand
and the memory of the words she had written, and then he set out.
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