Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/66

36 private—I don't wear shoulder straps," and he said I could go on, and left me, doubtless revolving in his mind the wisdom of allowing such a reply to "pass" a woman, and being wholly unable to see the point.

We arrived at Mason's Island a little after noon, and having there a brother's wife, who had come out to remain with her husband while in camp, I remained there over night. It was a hurrying scene in the gray November afternoon, when the ferry-boat touched the landing, and the sick who were to be left there were taken in ambulances to the hospital.

There was greeting of friends who had been separated for months—and a glad, homelike feeling throbbed through those sluggish pulses at the sight of familar faces.

The next morning I recrossed the ferry, and went in an ambulance to Falls Church, eight miles distant. The ride was very pleasant in the cool November sunshine, where the leaves rustled down, dry and dead, with every breath of wind, all colored as I had seen them always by my own home which bordered on Cayuga lake.

And as I rode I tried to think myself winding along the roads which by and by would give me a glimpse of the bright waters, with the white breakers running in wild play over them. But again I looked on my strange carriage;—we did not ride then from neighbor to neighbor in vehicles made to take the wounded from the battle-field, and I was myself again—the hospital nurse, going to her new field of duties.

It seemed long—very long since September went,