"I'll take the baby down the street, Mrs. Schmidt," Emmeline offered. "I have to go to the store."
"Thanks to you," answered Mrs. Schmidt, whose dinner dishes were still on the table. "With these six, indeed, I don't know what to do, Emmy."
Emmeline took the baby with the condescending air of perfect capability to perfect incapability. She would never, she said to herself, suffer her house or her children to get into the condition in which Mrs. Schmidt's house and children were. When she had washed the baby's face and smoothed his hair, he stopped crying at once, and with a beaming smile settled himself into his little cart. Then, with "Get ups!" and with prancings, Emmeline took him through the gate and down the quiet street. At the corner she stopped to look up the hill toward the seminary building and out toward the college. Now that the boys had formed a company and had gone to war, the town and Emmeline were denied even the excitement of their presence.
Emmeline traveled more and more slowly. The air was hot and heavy. She had seen nothing that day of her bosom friend, Eliza Batterson; perhaps if she waited, Eliza might appear. Her other boon companion, Jessie Mullin, had long since been sent away from Gettysburg to visit friends in the country to the north, so much did her parents fear an invasion. Emmeline prayed that no such ignominious experience would be hers.
Presently old black Tom, who sold peanuts on the streets of Gettysburg, stopped to inquire about Henry; and then Mrs. Peter, the ever-curious, asked about Bertha. To black Tom, Emmeline gave gracious response; to Mrs. Peter, Emmeline returned an answer so short and sharp as to be impertinent. Mrs. Bannon and Mrs. Schmidt were neighbors, and had a right to discuss Bertha; Mrs. Peter had none.
When Mrs. Peter had gone, Emmeline remembered uneasily that Bertha had been crying, and that there was constantly a strained, anxious look in her mother's eyes. But Henry would come back; there would probably be a letter from him in the evening mail. Not for an instant would Emmeline admit to her mind the possibility of anything else.
Presently Emmeline yawned. She could hear now unmistakably the sound of voices, but it was only the laughter of the pupils of the Young Ladies' Academy. Next year Emmeline would enter the academy; there was at present, however, between her and those young ladies a gulf as wide as the Atlantic. She nodded to them, and then took the handle of the baby cart and proceeded on her way to the village store.