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There was a narrow single bed in which mother, Jenny, and I slept, a decrepit table on which stood a diseased mirror, a broken lounge without a bottom, and a pine armoir filled with corn! In the centre stood the chief ornament, a huge pile of dirt, near which Miriam's mattress was placed, while the sail of a boat flanked it in on the other side, arranged as a bed for Tiche.
The man walked in very unceremoniously to get corn from the armoir as we got up, throwing open the windows and performing sundry little offices usually reserved for femmes-de-chambre; but with that exception everything went on very well. Breakfast being a luxury not to be procured, we got into the carriages before sunrise, and left this romantic abode of dogs and contentment.
Just now I was startled by a pistol shot. Threatening to shoot her, Mr. Carter playfully aimed Miriam's pistol at her, and before he could take fair aim, one barrel went off, the shot grazing her arm and passing through the armoir just behind. Of course, there was great consternation. Those two seem doomed to kill each other. She had played him the same trick before.
I wonder if the people would have the conscience to offer to return them? A young lady, passing by one of the pillaged houses, expressed her surprise at seeing an armoir full of women's and children's clothes being emptied, and the contents tied up in sheets. "What can you do with such things?" she asked a soldier who seemed more zealous than the rest.
Letters, labeled by the boys "Private," were strewn over the floor; they opened every armoir and drawer, collected every rag to be found and littered the whole house with them, until the wonder was, where so many rags had been found. Father's armoir was relieved of everything; Gibbes's handsome Damascus sword with the silver scabbard included.
We all sleep on the floor and keep our clothes in our trunks except Lilly, who has an armoir without doors. Knives and forks for dinner to-day, though the table still consists of a single plank. The house really has a suffocating effect on me, there is such a close look about it.
Mother's beautiful mahogany armoir, whose single door was an extremely fine mirror, was entered by crashing through the glass, when it was emptied of every article, and the shelves half-split, and half-thrust back crooked.
Armoirs, bureaus, and everything else were thrown open, and Miriam and I hastily packed our sacks with any articles that came to hand, having previously taken the precaution to put on everything fresh from the armoir.
There was plenty of split-up furniture, though. I stood in mother's room before the shattered armoir, which I could hardly believe the same that I had smoothed my hair before, as I left home three weeks previously. Father's was split across, and the lock torn off, and in the place of the hundreds of articles it contained, I saw two bonnets at the sight of which I actually sat down to laugh.
I knew nothing then; but next day, going into mother's room, I saw him standing before the glass door of her armoir, looking at a black coat he had on. Involuntarily I cried out, "Oh, don't, Hal!" "Don't what? Isn't it a nice coat?" he asked. "Yes; but it is buttoned up to the throat, and I don't like to see it.
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