n followed them to the Colonel's tent, which had a raised floor
and the good cheer of cigar-boxes, and of something under his cot that
looked like a champagne-basket; and he smiled to think of Chaffee's
Spartan-like outfit at Chickamauga. Every now and then a soldier would
come up with a complaint, and the Colonel would attend to him
personally.

It was plain that the old ex-Confederate was the father of the regiment,
and was beloved as such; and Crittenden was again struck with the
contrast it all was to what he had just seen, knowing well, however,
that the chief difference was in the spirit in which regular and
volunteer approached the matter in hand. With one, it was a business
pure and simple, to which he was trained. With the other, it was a lark
at first, but business it soon would be, and a dashing business at that.
There was the same crowd before the tent--Judith, who greeted him with
gracious frankness, but with a humorous light in her eye that set him
again to wondering; and Phyllis and Phyllis's mother, Mrs. Stanton, who
no sooner saw Crittenden than she furtively looked at Judith with a
solicitude that was maternal and significant.

There can be no better hot-bed of sentiment than the mood of man and
woman when the man is going to war; and if Mrs. Stanton had not shaken
that nugget of wisdom from her memories of the old war, she would have
known it anyhow, for she was blessed with a perennial sympathy for the
heart-troubles of the young, and she was as quick to apply a remedy to
the children of other people as she was to her own, whom, by the way,
she cured, one by one, as they grew old enough to love and suffer, and
learn through suffering what it was to be happy. And how other mothers
wondered how it was all done! In truth, her method--if she had a
conscious method--was as mysterious and as sure as is the way of nature;
and one could no more catch her nursing a budding passion here and there
than one could catch nature making the bluegrass grow. Everybody saw the
result; nobody saw just how it was done. That afternoon an instance was
at hand. Judith wanted to go home, and Mrs. Stanton, who had brought her
to camp, wanted to go to town. Phyllis, too, wanted to go home, and her
wicked little brother, Walter, who had brought her, climbed into
Basil's brake before her eyes, and, making a face at her, disappeared in
a cloud of dust. Of course, neither of the brothers nor the two girls
knew what was going on,