"Did you doubt it, papa?" I asked, with a smile.

"No, my pet."

"Then why do you say that as soon as I make my appearance!"

"I can hardly tell - the consciousness forced itself upon me.

You are looking at life with a microscope, - as of old."

"With a microscope, papa!"

"To pick up invisible duties and find out indiscernible dangers -"

"When one is as old as I am," I said, "there is no need of a microscope to find out either dangers or duties."

"Ha!" said my father, folding me in his arms - "what dangers have you discovered, Daisy?"

"I believe they are everywhere, papa," I said, kissing him.

"Not here," he said, fondly; "there shall be none here for you."

"Mr. Randolph," said mamma, laughing, "if Daisy is to be meat and drink as well as scenery to you, we may as well dispense with the usual formalities; but I hope you will condescend to look at dinner as usual."

CHAPTER VIII.

SKIRMISHING

That first dinner at home! how strange and sweet it was. So sweet, that I could scarcely hear the note of the little warning bell down in the bottom of my heart. But mamma had struck it up stairs, and its vibrations would not quite be still. Yet there was a wonderful charm in my own home circle.

The circle was made larger in the evening, by the coming in of two of Ransom's friends, who were also, I saw, friends of my father and mother. They were two Southern gentlemen, as I immediately knew them to be; MM. de Saussure and Marshall, Ransom's worthy compeers in the line of personal appearance and manner. De Saussure especially; but I liked Marshall best.

This I found out afterward. The conversation that evening naturally went back to America which I had just come from, and to the time of my leaving it, and to the news then new there and but lately arrived here. I had to hear the whole Bull Run affair talked over from beginning to end and back again. It was not so pleasant a subject to me as to the rest of the company; which I suppose made the talk seem long.

"And you were there?" said Mr. de Saussure, suddenly appealing to me.

"Not at Mana.s.ses," I said.

"No, but close by; held in durance in the capital, with liberators so near. It seems to me very stupid of Beauregard not to have gone in and set you free."

"Free?" said I, smiling. "I was free."

"There will be no freedom in the country, properly speaking, until that Northern usurper is tossed out of the place he occupies."

"That will be soon," said my mother.

"In what sense is Mr. Lincoln a usurper?" I ventured to ask.

"He was duly elected."

"Is it possible Daisy has turned politician?" exclaimed my brother.

"He is not a usurper," said Mr. Marshall.

"He is, if being out of his place can make him so," said De Saussure; "and the a.s.sumption of rights that n.o.body has given him. By what t.i.tle does he dare shut up Southern ports and send his cut-throats upon Southern soil?"

"Well, they have met their punishment," my father remarked.

And it hurt me sorely to hear him say it with evident pleasure.

"The work is not done yet," said Ransom. "But at Bull Run rates - 'sixty pieces of splendid cannon' taken, as Mr. Davis says, and how many killed and prisoners? - the mud-sills will not be able to keep it up very long. Absurd! to think that those Northern shopkeepers could make head against a few dozen Southern swords."

"There were only a few dozen swords at Mana.s.ses," said De Saussure. "Eighteen thousand, Mr. Davis puts the number in his Richmond speech; and the Northern army had sixty thousand in the field."

"A Richmond paper says forty thousand instead of eighteen,"

Mr. Marshall remarked.

"Mr. Russell, of the London _Times_, estimated Beauregard's force at sixty thousand," I said.

"_He_ don't know!" said De Saussure.

"And Mr. Davis does not know," I added; "for the whole loss of cannon on the Northern side that day amounted to but seventeen. Mr. Davis may as well be wrong in one set of facts as in another. He said also that provisions enough were taken to feed an army of fifty thousand men for twelve months."

"Well, why not?" said Ransom, frowning.

"These gentlemen can tell you why not."

"Pretty heavy figures," said Mr. Marshall.

"Why are they not true, Miss Randolph?" Mr. de Saussure asked, bending as before a most deferential look upon me.

"And look here, - in what interest are you, Daisy?" my brother continued.

"Nothing is gained by blinking the truth anywhere, Ransom."

"No, that is true," said my father.

"Daisy has been under the disadvantage of hearing only one side lately," my mother remarked very coolly.

"But about the provisions, Miss Randolph?" Mr. De Saussure insisted, returning to the point with a willingness, I thought, to have me speak.

"Mamma says, I have heard only one side," I answered. "But on that side I have heard it remarked, that twelve thousand wagons would have been required to carry those provisions to the battlefield. I do not know if the calculation was correct."

Mr. De Saussure's face clouded for an instant. My father seemed to be pondering. Ransom's frowns grew more deep.

"What side are you on, Daisy?" he repeated.

"She is on her own side, of course," my mother said.

"I hope there is no doubt of that, Mrs. Randolph," said Mr.

Marshall. "Such an enemy would be very formidable! I should begin to question on which side I was myself."

They went off into a long discussion about the probable movements of the belligerent parties in America; what might be expected from different generals; how long the conflict was likely to last, and how its certain issue, the discomfiture of the North and the independence of the South, would be attained. Mingled with this discussion were laudations of Jefferson Davis, scornful reviling of President Lincoln, and sneers at the North generally; at their men, their officers, their money, their way of making it and their way of spending it. Triumphant antic.i.p.ations, of shame and defeat to them and the superb exaltation of the South, were scattered, like a salt and pepper seasoning, through all the conversation. I listened, with my nerves tingling sometimes, with my heart throbbing at other times; sadly inclined to believe they might be right in a part of their calculations; very sadly sure they were wrong in everything else. I had to keep a constant guard upon my face; happily my words were not called for. My eyes now and then met papa's, with a look that gave and received another sort of communication. When the evening was over, and papa was folding me in his arms to bid me good-night, he whispered, -