"Yes, and she cannot stay here behind me, to a certainty. Pratt is ordered off, and I must go see to my three-year-olds. Morgan will have them before I know what I'm about. I'll take the girl back to Wheeling, so far on her way home. As to this marriage"----
She stopped, with her fingers on her chin. The Doctor laughed to himself. She was deciding on Grey's fate and his, as if they were a pair of her three-year-olds that Government wanted to buy.
"It's unseemly, when the child's father is not here. That's how it seems to me, Dr. Blecker. As for love, and that, it will keep. Pha, pha! There's one suggestion of weight in favor of it. If you were killed in battle, the girl would have some provision as your widow that she could not have now. D'ye see?"
"I see; you come at the bone of the matter, certainly. I have concluded, Mrs. Sheppard, Grey must go with you; but she shall leave here as my wife. If there is any evil consequence, it shall come to me."
There was a moment's silence. He avoided the searching black eyes fixed on his face.
"It is not for me to judge in this matter," she said, with some reserve. "The girl is a good girl, however, and I will try and take the place of a mother to her. You have reasons for this haste unknown to me, probably. When do you wish the ceremony, and where, Doctor? The church up yonder," sliding into her easy, dogmatic tone again; "it's one of the few whole roofs in the place. That is best,--yes. And for time, say sunset. That will suit me. I must go write to that do nothing M'Key about the trousers for Pratt's men. They're boxed up in New York yet: and then I've to see to getting a supply of blue pills. If you'll only give one to each man two nights before going into battle, just enough to stir their livers up, you'll find it work like a charm in helping them to fight. Sundown,--yes. I cannot attend to it possibly before."
"It was the time I had fixed upon, if Grey consents."
"Pah! she's a bit of linen rag, that child. You can turn her round your finger, and you know it. You will find her down on the shore, I think. I must go and tell my young parson he had better read over the ceremony once or twice to be posted up in it."
"To be sure, Pratt," she said, a few moments after, as she detailed the intended programme to the Colonel, farther down the street,--"to be sure, it's too hasty. I have not had time to give it consideration as I ought. These wartimes, my brain is so thronged night and day. But I think it's a good match. There's an honest, downright vein in young Blecker that'll make a healthy life. Wants birth, to be sure. Girl's got that. You needn't sneer, Pratt. It is only men and women that come of the old rooted families, bad or good, that are self-poised. Made men always have an unsteady flicker, a hitch in their brains somewhere,--like your Doctor, eh? Grey's out of one of the solid old Pennsylvania stocks. Better blooded the mule, the easier goer, fast or not."