The Able McLaughlins
went on her errand, he was to take poor Jeannie a few prairie chickens, and those three young ducks she had raised for her, alone there with her bairns!
And if he was going, he must put on his uniform. He demurred. She insisted. Why, Jeannie had never seen him in his uniform! He smiled to hear her imply that not to have seen him so arrayed was the greatest of her deplorable privations. Yet he went and put it on, nevertheless, for it was the most handsome suit he had ever had, always before having been clothed in the handiwork of his mother and sisters. When he was ready to go, the ducks caught and tied, a bit of jelly safely wrapped, as he stood by the horse, in his mother's sight the most beautiful soldier in the American armies, she said:
"Jeannie's Jimmie was just your age, you mind, Wully."
She watched him riding away, the fondness of her face ministering to the joyous sense of well-being that swept over him. How unspeakably lovely the country was! How magnificent its richness! He had never felt it so keenly before. He must be getting like his father. Or perhaps it looked so much more impressive because he had seen so much swampy desolation in the South. The grass he rode through seemed to bend under the sparkling of the golden sunshine. He came to the creek, and as he crossed it he remembered with a pang the time his companions had staggered thankfully and hastily to drink out of a pool covered with green slime. He turned with disgust
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