Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/330

320 only says he wondered; and the lady told him it was n't a child, and he knew she knew best; that ain't really making up his mind; I don't call it so by a long shot;" and there the quarrel rested. Tilly was content, and if the whole truth were known, a little more than content, that "the soldier," as she always called their unknown correspondent, knew now that she was "grown up." Tilly had built no air-castles. She often thought she wished she could see "the soldier," but she had no more expectation of seeing him than of seeing General McClellan. Tilly was, as her mother had said, a good girl. She loved her melodeon; and she still spent two hours a day at her practicing. She had for several weeks now played in church, and that gave her a new stimulus to practice. For the rest, she helped her mother, she sewed for the soldiers, and still knitted at twilight on the rocks, stockings—of gray yarn,—now to be sent to hospitals.

One night, late in October, when the stage drove up to the Provincetown Hotel, the loungers on the piazza were surprised to see alighting from it a one-armed man, in a heavy army overcoat. His speech was not that of a military man, and his reticence as to his plans and purposes was baffling.

"Been in the war, eh?" said one, nodding toward the empty sleeve.

"Yes," said Joe, curtly.

"Discharged, I suppose."