Jennie Barton refused to listen to her father's abuse.
Socola found them in the middle of a family quarrel on the subject so intense he could not help hearing the conversation from the adjoining room before Jennie entered.
"The President hates Johnston, I tell you," stormed the Senator. "He doesn't like Beauregard either. He's jealous of him!"
"Father dear, how can you be so absurd!" the girl protested. "A few months ago Beauregard was a captain of artillery. The President has made him a general of equal rank with Lee and Johnston--"
"He's doing all he can now to spite him!"
"So General Beauregard says--the conceit of it! This little general but yesterday a captain to dare to say that the President who had honored him with such high command would sacrifice the country and injure himself just to spite the man he has promoted!"
"That will do, Jennie," the Senator commanded. "Women don't understand politics!"
"Thank God I don't understand that kind. I just know enough to be loyal to my Chief, when our life and his may depend on it--"
With a stamp of his heavy foot the Senator ended the discussion by leaving the room.
Jennie smiled sweetly as she extended her hand to Socola.
"I hope you were not alarmed, Signor. We never fight--"
"The President of the Confederacy is a very fortunate leader, Miss Jennie--"
"I'm afraid we don't know much. We just feel things."
"I think sometimes we only _know_ that way--"
He paused and looked at her hat with a gesture of dismay.
"I must," she said apologetically. "I've bought a whole carriage load of peaches and grapes. I went to the Alabama hospital yesterday with a little basket full and made some poor fellows glad. They gave out too quickly. Those who got none looked so wistfully at me as I passed out. I couldn't sleep last night. For hours and hours their deep-sunken eyes followed and haunted me with their pleading. And so I've got a whole load to take to-day. You'll go with me--won't you?"
He had come to declare his love and make this beautiful girl his conquest. She was ending the day by making him her lackey and errand boy.
It couldn't be helped. There was no mistaking the tones of her voice. She would certainly go. The only way to be with her was to dance attendance on wounded Confederate soldiers.