Everywhere was control, control, control;
and she really began to despair. There were examinations, and training,
and applications to the surgeon-general, and to the assistant surgeon,
and to special heads of departments and districts and States and
counties, for all I know. There was positively no end to the things she
would have to do to get a regular appointment to go forth and do her
duty to her country. So she threw up the whole business of regular army
nursing, and made up her mind to go out into the field of duty to which
she had appointed herself, and do the things she ought to do in the way
she thought they ought to be done. She likened herself to the knights of
old who used to go forth to fight for their ladies and for the upholding
of chivalry. She wanted to be a sort of a free-lance, but she did not
want to hire herself to anybody. She did not fancy being anything like a
guerilla, and then it suddenly struck her that if she did just as she
wanted to do she would resemble a bushwhacker more than anything else. A
bushwhacker is an honest man. When there is no war he whacks bushes,
that is, he cuts them down; and when there is a war--"

"He whacks the enemy," suggested John Gayther.

The Daughter of the House smiled a little. "Yes," she said; "he tries to
do that. But he is entirely independent; he is under nobody; and that
suited Almia. A bushwhacker nurse was exactly what she wanted to be, and
as soon as this was settled she made all her preparations to go to the
war."

"Of course," said John Gayther, "the young lady's parents--or perhaps
she did not have any parents?"

The Daughter of the House frowned. "Now, John," said she, "I don't want
anything said about parents. There were no parents in this case, at
least none to be considered. I don't say whether they were dead or not,
but the story has nothing to do with them. Parents would be very
embarrassing, and I don't want to stop to bother with them."

John Gayther nodded his head as if he thought she was quite right, and
she went on:

"The first thing Almia did was to fit herself out after the fashion she
thought best adapted to a bushwhacker nurse. She wore heavy boots, and a
bicycle-skirt which just came to the top of the boots; and in this skirt
she put ever so many pockets. She wore a little cap with a strap to go
under the chin; and from her belt on the left side she hung a very
little cask, which she happened to have, something like those carrie