given a sutler-shop. Just see
her move! She's got a purtier gait than our thoroughbred colt."

"IT does one's eyes good to look at her. It makes me feel better than a
cart-load of the stuff that old Pillbags forces down our throats."

"You're a-talking. She's a lady--every inch of her--genuine, simon-pure,
fast colors, all-wool, a yard wide, as fine as silk, and bright a a May
morning."

"And as wholesome as Spring sunshine."

All unconscious that her appearance was to the invalids who looked
upon her like a sweet, health-giving breeze bursting through a tainted
atmosphere, Rachel passed wearily along the burning walks toward
the Surgeon's office, with a growing heart-sickness at the unwelcome
appearance of the task she had elected for herself.

The journey had been full of irritating discomforts. Heat, dust, and
soiled linen are only annoyances to a man; they are real miseries to a
woman. The marvel is not that Joan of Arc dared the perils of battle,
but that she endured the continued wretchedness of camp uncleanliness,
to the triumphant end.

With her throat parched, garments "sticky," hair, eyes, ears and
nostrils filled with irritating dust, and a feeling that collar and
cuffs were, as ladies phrase it, "a sight to behold," Rachel's heroic
enthusiasm ebbed to the bottom. Ushered into the Surgeon's office she
was presented to a red-faced, harsh-eyed man, past the middle age, who
neither rose nor apologized to her for being discovered in the undress
of a hot day. He motioned her to a seat with the wave of the fan he
was vigorously using, and taking her letter of introduction, adjusted
eye-glasses upon a ripe-colored nose, and read it with a scowl that
rippled his face with furrows.

"So you're the first of the women nurses that's to be assigned to me,"
he said ungraciously, after finishing the letter, and scanning her
severely for a moment over the top of his glasses. "I suppose I have to
have 'em."

The manner hurt Rachel even more than the words. Before she could frame
a reply he continued:

"I don't take much stock in this idea of women nurses, especially when
they're young and pretty." He scowled at Rachel as if she had committed
a crime in being young and beautiful. "But the country's full of women
with a Quixotic notion of being Florence Nightingales, and they've
badgered the Government into accepting their services. I suppose I'll
have to take my share of them. Ever nursed?"

"No, sir," responded R