wly:

"'Cause--'cause you're one of the damn Yankees."

"Oh! oh! oh!" exclaimed the soldier, shocked to hear a baby's lips
profaned. "Little girls shouldn't use such words. Why, Virgie!"

She raised her eyes, clear, fearless, filled with vindicating innocence.

"Well, it's your _name_, isn't it? _Everybody_ calls you that."

"Um--yes," he admitted, striving to check the twitching of his lips; "I
suppose they do--south of Washington. But don't you know we are just
like other people?" She shook her head. "Oh, yes, we are. Why, _I_ have
a little girl at home--not any bigger than you."

"Have you?" asked Virgie, her budding racial prejudice at war with
youthful curiosity. "What's her name?"

"Gertrude," he answered softly, tenderly. "Gertrude Morrison. Would you
like to see her picture?"

"Yes," said the little rebel, and stepped across the gulf which had lain
between her and her enemy. "You can sit down if you want to. Jus' put
Susan Jemima on the table."

"Thank you," returned her visitor, obeying instructions, seating himself
and loosening the upper buttons of his coat. On his neck, suspended by
a chain, was a silver locket containing the miniature of a plump and
pretty child. It had lain there since the war began, through many a
bivouac, many a weary march, and even in the charge he could feel it
tapping against his breast; so now, as he held it out to Virgie, the
father's hand was trembling.

"There she is. My Gertrude--my little Gertrude."

Virgie leaned forward eagerly.

"Oh!" she said, in unaffected admiration, "She's _mighty_ pretty.
She's--" The child stopped suddenly, and raised her eyes. "An' she's
fat, too. I reckon Gertrude gets lots to eat, doesn't she?"

"Why, yes," agreed the father, thinking of his comfortable Northern
home; "of course. Don't you?"

Virgie weighed the question thoughtfully before she spoke.

"Sometimes--when Daddy gets through the lines and brings it to me."

The soldier started violently, wrenched back from the selfish dream of
happiness that rose as he looked at the picture of his child.

"What! Is _that_ why your father comes?"

"Yes, sir."

"I didn't know! I thought he came--"

He rose to his feet and turned away, his thoughts atumble, a pang of
parental pity gnawing at his heart; then he wheeled and faced her,
asking, with a break in his husky voice:

"And at other times--what do you eat, then?"

She made a quaint, depreciating gesture toward the appointment