It was a strange old house, built in colonial days, with the veranda that ran all around it supported by tall Corinthian columns. We woke the owner up--an old man, who came down to the door shivering, candle in hand, and led us through a latticed room, then into another room and up a narrow flight of stairs with sharp turns to a bedroom with dormer windows and ancient furniture. We were welcome to our lodgings, he said, but he had nothing to eat in the house--we would be welcome to it if he had. He looked gaunt and hungry himself.
We had no fire. He left us his candle and went down in the dark himself and we got to bed as quickly as possible. Lieutenant Wumble, who was down-stairs looking after Miles and the horses and the mules, got himself stowed away somewhere.
Next morning my husband was ill; but the old man’s wife gave him some of her remedies, and with the help of a little money from me got something for us all to eat. About noon Dan insisted that he was able to travel, and that he must reach his command that day.
When we arrived at Petersburg my husband put me on the train for Richmond and bade me good-by. It was the last time I saw him before the surrender.
HOW WE LIVED IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY
Though the last act of our heroic tragedy was already beginning I was so far from suspecting it that I joined mother at the Arlington, prepared to make a joke of hardships and wring every possible drop of pleasure out of a winter in Richmond, varied, as I fondly imagined, by frequent if brief visits from Dan.
The Arlington was kept on something like the European plan, not from choice of landlady or guests but from grim necessity. Feeding a houseful of people was too arduous and uncertain an undertaking in those days for a woman to assume. Mrs. Fry, before our arrival in July, had informed her boarders that they could continue to rent their rooms from her, but that they must provide their own meals. We paid her $25 a month for our room--the price of a house in good times and in good money. During my absence in Mansfield, Hicksford, and other places, mother, to reduce expenses, had rented half of her room and bed to Delia McArthur, of Petersburg. I now rented a little bed from Mrs. Fry for myself, and set it up in the same room.