ring that something in the shape
of conversation must be carried on, he said: "Very pretty girl
that--cousin of yours, didn't they say, Captain? _What_ is her name?"

"Eh?" said the Captain. "Oh, my cousin yonder? yes, Miss Harris, Miss
Joe Harris--daughter of Mrs. Harris." It is supposed that in the latter
name he alluded to a somewhat doubtful character of Charles Dickens.
"Devil of a girl, Colonel, _I_ tell you!"

"Ah, what do you mean?" asked the Colonel.

"Mean? why I mean that when I came home two or three days ago, she
seemed rather glad than otherwise to see that I had been cut up. Stuck
her finger in my eye, or rather in the place where my eye had been, to
see whether they had made a clean operation of it, and nearly broke that
bone of my left arm again, trying to discover whether they had set it
entirely straight. Said I must have been a splendid subject in the
hospital. Devil of a girl--going into one of the hospitals to nurse,
directly. Says that she is never happy except she has a few broken
limbs, and smashed heads, and gunshot wounds through the body, and holes
made by Minie bullets, under her especial care."

"Horrible!" gasped the Colonel, who could no longer sit silent under
such a revelation of female character.

"Yes, it _is_ a little horrible, but a fact, though!" said the Captain.
"Devil of a girl, I tell you! I believe that she would just as lieve see
my head amputated as not, provided she could stand by and witness a
'beautiful operation.'"

"I say this is dreadful!" said the Colonel.

"Dreadful, of course," said the Captain. "Still, nothing when you once
get used to it. Plenty of women just like her--all female devils, though
they manage to conceal the fact, sometimes, until they get a man under
their thumbs, especially for the purpose of practising on him. But we
_want_ women who have some nerve, for these bloody times. Don't you
think so, Colonel?"

"Yes--I can't say--that is, really I don't know!" answered the Colonel,
who did not at that particular moment, know much else than that he was a
little sick at the stomach and that the whole world seemed to be a kind
of hideous mockery.

"Oh yes, fact!" continued the Captain, who saw the white face and did
not intend that it should regain any fresher color, in a hurry. "Bloody
times, I tell you, Colonel! Make me think, sometimes, when the dead are
lying in heaps around me and the blood running like small brooks, of
that time prophesied f