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we have had only one apiece,” says Nealie. We were sewing at her house.
    Jennie Kate screwed up her face, thinking, then asked if the admirer was Ezra Harper, a widower who boards with Mrs. Kittie.
    “Certainly not!” Mrs. Kittie replies. “Do you think I would marry an old man when a young one will do? I’d as soon kiss a dried codfish as Mr. Harper.” She danced around the room, making the floorboards shake, and sang, “I am bound to be a soldier’s wife or die an old maid.” She dances like a thresher and sings like Pussy Willow when you step on her tail. “Kittie Wales marry a border? La!” she says.
    “Then who?” Jennie Kate asks. She is not one to mind her own business. But then, we were all curious because we didn’t know any young men in the neighborhood, let alone one whowas simpleton enough to marry such a mountain of a woman, nice though she might be.
    At last, Mrs. Kittie took a
carte de visite
from her pocket and passed it around. “He sent his picture with the shawl, the shawl being ‘jerked’ from a fine plantation for me.” Lizzie, it is the soldier boy who had received our first blanket. “He is of the opinion,” continues Mrs. Kittie, “that I have written him to say I have yellow curls and pale eyes and am of a marriageable age and want to correspond with a soldier.”
    She put on such a silly, simpering air that Nealie and I burst out laughing. So it seems that Mrs. Kittie had turned the tables and played the joke on us. Now the question is, Will she reply to the letter and continue the ruse? Jennie Kate asked what she would do if he came calling when his enlistment was up. Mrs. Kittie frowned, then replies, “One of you will have to write and tell him I am drowned in the creek.”
    Nealie’s farm is to the west of ours, about three miles. Her husband and his brother work it together with some neighbor boys, and it is a good one. They were about the house during our sewing, and Mrs. Kittie, who does not mind stirring up a hornet’s nest, asked why they were not in the army. Nealie replied for them that they do not want to join a war, as they do not care to die for the Union. Mr. Samuel Smead offered to see me home after quilting, and I was tempted to accept, because he is so charming. Besides, I knew it would vex Mother Bullock, who has got on my nerves more than usual lately, but I was prudent and went with Jennie Kate in her buggy.
    I like Nealie as well as anybody I have met in this place, because she is merry and doesn’t put on airs. She has the brightest red hair you ever saw and green eyes. Nealie dresses as plain as anybody, but she has choice things, which I saw when I went into the bedroom to get my shawl. She has a shell cameo carved with a man’s face, a pair of garnet eardrops, and a ring with a pale yellow stone. But the nicest of all is a brooch, which is ivory, with a woman’s face painted on it. I wanted to ask Nealie if the woman was her mother, but since the jewelry was in thebureau drawer, hidden under Nealie’s gloves, I kept the question to myself.
    Our brother Billy wrote to complain Papa works him too much. “I have been a good horse, but he’s rode me too hard,” Billy says. That is the truth, for Papa’s rode all of us too hard, and that’s why me and you left. Billy says with the way Papa treated him, he knows what it is to be a slave and thinks he will join up as a drummer boy. But Billy is only thirteen, and Papa would never allow it. Bad as Papa treats him, Billy is his favorite, and he would send the other five boys to war before he’d let Billy go. Mama and Papa love us, I think, but they believe it would spoil us to let us know.
    I received a letter from Mama, too. She is worse than Charlie for writing and takes up her pen only when there is bad news to be spread. This time, the bad news is about you. Lizzie, have you kept it from me for fear I would worry? Are things bad with James at work? You know how jealous people spread rumors, and I