Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/129

DAVE'S BUSINESS boy—our baby. He don't know Union from pot-cheese! No, nor rebel, either. And he's been home some time. You don't know the news."

That sort of stopped them for a minute.

"Let us see him," says the officer then.

I turns and yells in the house, funny:

"Little Davy, come out. Some gentlemen wants to see you. I don't want 'em to, but they won't go unless you come toddling out!"

And I laughs to think how they'd be fooled when they saw—my baby.

Well, they was—and not over well pleased to be fooled.

Dave comes loafing to the door in his shirtsleeves, looking bigger than ever. He was reading something—a newspaper scrap—and didn't bother much about the soldiers.

"Baby, eh?" says they, and laughs most as hard as I had. "Very shrewd."

Then the officer says, again to the one behind him: 113