Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/244

202 from him a positive order for the payment of the withheld sum by the paymaster.

Returning for the third time I found the office closed, and so went up to Bladensburg to visit Mrs. Youngs, and try my fortune another day. Again I made my appearance before the gentleman in question, and found him obdurate—still refusing to pay me. Now I was a woman, and I was footsore and weary, and I wanted my money, and I said, "Well, you look very cosy here, and I will take a chair while you think the matter over, for I shall not go away till I am paid by somebody," and I sat down, taking up the morning paper, my thoughts so busy with all the outside circumstances surrounding me, that I failed to notice for the space of five minutes that I held the paper upside down.

Perhaps they saw defiance in my despair, for presently the paymaster sharply ordered the clerk to see how much it was, and pay me, for a woman sitting there in the office all day, was a nuisance not to be endured.

The clerk handed me the money, and I said to the very gentlemanly paymaster, "The war is at its close, and we nurses are about to lose a good job of twelve dollars a month, while you will be out just one hundred and twenty, to say nothing of what you can browbeat out of just such women as myself," and bidding him "good-day," I left, very much to his satisfaction, no doubt—certainly it was to mine.

A man in such a position can make himself so agreeable if he chooses, browbeating a woman, and those