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But you must not think for this that Dode's temper was the bugbear of the house, though the girl herself thought it was, and shed some of the bitterest tears of her life over it. Just a feverish blaze in the blood, caught from some old dead grandfather, that burst out now and then.
Out in the little kitchen, the day had warmed up wonderfully. Dode's Aunt Perrine, a widow of thirty years' standing, had come over to "see to things durin' this murnful affliction." As she had brought her hair-trunk and bonnet-box, it was probable her stay would be indefinite. Dode was conscious of her as she would be of an attack of nettle-rash. Mrs.
Common sense, and a flash of something behind to give it effect, spoke out of Dode's brown eyes, just then. "Go into the stable, and bring a horse after me. The cart is broken?" "Yes, 'm. Dat cussed Ben" "Bring the horse, and some brandy, Uncle Bone." "Danged ef yer shall kill yerself! Chile, I tell yer he's dead. I'll call Mist' Perrine."
"Why, Gaunt!" said Palmer, "what are you doing in the cold? Come to the fire, boy!" He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in big own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took them from her. "Let me do it," he muttered. "I'd like to make your whole life warm, Dode, your life, and any one's you love." Dode's face flushed with a happy smile.
"We'll miss them yet!" firing after him with an oath. The pistol missed, flashed in the pan. "Wet!" dashing it on the ground. "Fire, Gaunt! quick!" The man looked round; he ran lamely, a thick, burly figure, a haggard face. Gaunt's pistol fell. Dode's father! the only man that loved him! "Damn you!" shouted Dyke, "are you going to shirk?" Why, this was the work!
There was a party of Confederates in Blue's Gap, a mountain-fastness near by, and Scofield had heard a rumor that the Unionists would attack them to-morrow morning: he meant to try and find out the truth of it, so as to give the boys warning to be ready, and, maybe, lend them a helping hand. Only for Dode's sake, he would have been in the army long ago.
Dode shut the door. Outside lay the winter's night, snow, death, the war. She shivered, shut them out. None of her nerves enjoyed pain, as some women's do. Inside, you call it cheap and mean, this room? Yet her father called it Dode's snuggery; he thought no little nest in the world was so clean and warm.
Dode's arm was strong-nerved as well as fair; she helped him rise, and stood beside him as he went to the door, for he walked unsteadily. He took his hand from her shoulder instantly, did not look at her: followed with his eye the black line of the fretted hills, the glimmer of the distant watch-fires. The path to the West lay through the Rebel camps.
Some healthy hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of light, will not let it go.
Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate, looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist' Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty.
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