M CHAPTER XXX. MUSIC'S DINNER. Rats are not a dainty dish to set before a king, But for a really hungry man they're just the very thing; Take him down and serve him brown; you've all you can desire. -[Savarin. USIC was a little mite of a fellow, a mere boy, with no beard upon his face, but in his heart all the mischief of a big man. Our chimney-corner legends are doubtless working out one of the riddles involved in the study of human nature in their tales of elfin history and fairy lore, wherein malice and good humor are so strangely commingled. Shakspeare seizes this same idea in depicting the outre character of Caliban, as Sir Walter Scott does with his Black Dwarf, Dickens with Miss Mowcher, and Victor Hugo in his Quasimodo. Music was at the bottom of more fun and practical jokes than any other member of our command, and his activity in that direction fully compensated for his deficiency in size. On the 9th of March, 1863, our brigade was moved from Big Black to Grand Gulf, some forty miles or more. I had not yet resumed my official position and therefore "took it easy" through the country in company with Adjutant Greenwood. We were marching among our friends and the orders. were very strict in forbidding all straggling and foraging. General Pemberton, who was something of a martinet, caused these orders to be rigidly enforced, and called on all field officers to see that they were. Hence we united the duty devolving on us of keeping a sharp look-out for stragglers, with the pleasure of straggling ourselves-certainly the highest of all a soldier's enjoyments. We had a reasonable excuse also in the fact that an officer on the march seldom gets dinner, unless he carries some "hardtack" in his pocket to be spliced with "sorghum "pine-top;" the private fares much better, for he has his haversack always stuffed with edibles. When Greenwood suggested we should call at a very respectable house, some distance ahead of us, which we were approaching by a long slope of at least a mile, I forgot discipline and the example I ought to set, and in an evil hour assented. We rode up to the gate and hallooed. A very nice looking girl came out. The lower part of her face was handsome, the rest we could not see, as she kept her large sunbonnet drawn down most provokingly. She seemed extremely modest, answering merely in monosyllables and entirely too bashful to look us squarely in the face. She said no one was at home but herself and sister, but that if we could feed our horses they would do the best they could for us in the shape of dinner. "Deuced pretty girl that," the Adjutant remarked, as we unsaddled our nags. "I'll be hanged if I don't make love to her, sure." When we went to the house the girls were busily engaged, both with their sun-bonnets still on their heads, their long dresses sweeping the floor, and their sleeves drabbling in the dough, which I attributed to either an excessive modesty, or, in their hurry, not taking the time to roll them up as I had noticed housewives generally did when employed in the culinary line. We also remarked, with some surprise, their ignorance of where different articles were to be foundexploring a barrel of soft soap in search of brown sugar, and dipping into the lard keg for a measure of flour; but they explained it, as well as an occasional exhibition of bad temper, (the enunciation of unfeminine words,) by the fact, as they asserted it, that "Mammy did all the cooking and we don't know nothin' 'bout it no how." They made havoc among the chickens, and added to them ham, sausage, dried beef, home-made cheese and choice preserves. Indeed, the dinner was a gorgeous affair, and we did ample justice to it. Greenwood was as good as his word, during the meal, with softest and most languishing eyes he ogled the girl who first met us and afterwards he sidled up to her. "What is your name, sweetheart?" "Madeline," she answered in a sweet but somewhat constrained voice, "but they call me 'Mudgy,' for short." Greenwood looked at me with a grimace. "Don't you. call me your sweetheart; what do you for? I hain't got "Oh," says he, after the most approved Romeo style in the moonlight scene, "because I want you for my darling— won't you be?" "I don't know," she replied, shyly, "I'll ask mammy." "Bother mammy! talk to me about your own dear self." "Oh, la! don't," she exclaimed suddenly. "How you scare me! durn it all, don't get so close to me." But I could perceive that she had resigned her hand to him. and he was engaged in vigorously squeezing it; and when he started to go, after quite a struggle, which I could not see but heard quite distinctly, he rewarded himself with several smacking kisses. Considering her previous demure deportment, I was somewhat scandalized at the unconcealed glee with which the taller sister witnessed these improper proceedings. We were on our horses before we thought of the pay we ought to tender them for their hospitality, and the Adjutant returned to settle it if they would receive anything, which he very much doubted. When he rejoined me his visage was rather blank. "Why dang it," said he, "that cussed Mudgy charged me seven dollars and a half." "Did you pay it ?" "Yes; couldn't help it." "Why?" "I told her I thought it was too much. She whimpered and said she thought from our looks we were gentlemen enough to pay them after all the trouble we had caused them; that dad wouldn't like it if he knew it, and she didn't allow men to kiss her for nothing no how-and all such infernal foolishness; and I paid her to make her hold her tongue." "She's a sharp one," I remarked. 66 "They are all alike," said the ungallant Greenwood, bitterly. Confound the women; they never care a cent for a fellow only for what they can get out of him." After reaching this profound and logical conclusion, we rode on. About ten that night he and myself with several other officers were sitting around our camp-fire listening to his glowing recital of the pleasant adventure of the day, his enthusiastic description of the beauty of his rustic sweetheart, and the toothsomeness of her cooking, but not a word of its cost, while Music stood by deeply interested and supplemented it by wishing to God he could get just one such dinner. The laugh caused by this prosaic remark had hardly subsided when one of General Bowen's orderlies came up with an old gentleman. |