In spite of his prepossessions against it, Shorty took naturally to
Headquarters duty, as he did to everything else in the army. He even
took a pride in his personal appearance, and appeared every morning as
spick and span as the barber-shop around the corner could make him.
This was because the General saw and approved it, and--because of the
influence Maria had projected into his life. The Deacon's well-ordered
home had been a revelation to him of another world, of which he wanted
to be a part. The gentle quiet and the constant consideration for
others that reigned there smoothed off his rough corners and checked the
rasping of his ready tongue.

"I'm goin' to try to be half-white," he mentally resolved; "at least, as
long's I'm north o' the Ohio River. When I'm back agin at the front, I
kin take a rest from being respectable."

He was alert, prompt, and observant, and before he was himself aware of
it began running things about the ante-rooms to Headquarters. More and
more the General and Chief Clerk kept putting the entire disposal of
certain matters in his hands, and it was not surprising that he acted at
times as if he were the Headquarters himself, and the General and others
merely attaches. Shorty always had that way about him.

"No, you can't see the General today," he would say to a man as to whom
he had heard the General or the Chief Clerk hint was a bore, and wasted
their time. "The General's very busy. The President's layin' down on him
for his advice about a campaign to take Richmond by a new way, and the
General's got to think at the rate of a mile a minute in order to git it
off by telegraph."

[Illustration: DON'T YOU KNOW BETTER THAN TO COME TO HEADQUARTERS LIKE
THAT? 156]

"Here," to a couple of soldiers who came up to get their furloughs
extended, "don't you know better than to come to Headquarters looking
as if your clothes had been blowed on to you? How long've you bin in the
army? Hain't you learned yit that you must come to Headquarters in full
dress? Go back and git your shoes blacked, put on collars, button up
your coats, and come up here lookin' like soldiers, not teamsters on the
Tullyhomy mud march."

"No," very decisively, to a big-waisted, dark-bearded man; "you can't git
no permit here to open no shebang in camp or anywheres near. Too many
like you out there now. We're goin' to root 'em all out soon. They're
all sellin' whisky on the sly, and every last one of 'em orter be in
j