Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/170

134 raid with brush and comb laid them low by dozens; but still they came; still they swarmed our clothing, and beds, and tents, and we made a virtue of necessity, and endured.

I sometimes went to the front, to see the boys of our own regiment, taking up little articles—as stamps, paper, and things not easily obtained there at all times; and one day, in the early September, I proposed to take a journey there, and hardly knew what conveyance I should find.

Still, as my will was generally obeyed in some shape, I looked about me for some mode of travel, first engaging Steward Demming as driver. We found an old horse running about, which seemed to be ownerless, and an abandoned wagon, and proposed to take our journey with the aid of these, in faint remembrance of days of peace, when the wagon trundled over smooth roads, grass-lined, and wound in dusty quiet by the habitations of civilization.

We were to go on Monday—a day on which no thrifty housekeeper thinks of going on a visiting expedition; but our arts were the arts of war; we heeded no washing days at the front.

I had canned fruit and quite a collection of good things which I wished to take up to the boys, and we were astir early, eager as children for a holiday-ride. We tied up our broken wagon, and extemporized a harness out of ropes and old pieces of leather, put together in any shape, to keep the horse from leaving the vehicle behind him in his swift flight.