A Yankee Girl at Antietam

								

to a standstill.
“You can get out here, Roxy,” she said gravely. “It won’t be far for you
to walk home.” And without a word Roxy jumped from the wagon and turned
on her homeward way.
“I don’t care,” she told herself. “Polly Lawrence talks as if people in
Massachusetts were not as good as Maryland people. She always calls me
‘Yankee’ as if I was an Indian or—or something!” and with a little sob,
Roxy trudged along the road over which she had only a brief time before
rode so happily; and on reaching the stone bridge she stopped and leaned
against its rough parapet, gazing down at the slow-moving waters of
Antietam River.
For a little while Roxy could think only of her disappointment, and of
Polly’s unkindness, and wish herself back in her own home in
Newburyport, where she had never even heard the word “Yankee,” and where
there were streets of pleasant houses, each one with its own garden, and
where little girls visited each other every day, bringing their
patchwork to sew; or if it was a “special party” the little girls would
bring their fine dolls dressed in silk and muslin.
Newburyport was very different from this hilly country where every
farmhouse was built of gray limestone, and stood on sloping field or
pasture, thought Roxy, turning her gaze to an opening in the distant
mountains where range upon range of blue heights rose against the sky.
“I do wish we were home,” she whispered to herself. “I wish there wasn’t
any war!” For it was in the early summer of 1862, when Northern and
Southern States were in arms against each other, and when President
Abraham Lincoln had fully determined to declare the freedom of negroes
held in slavery. Roxy’s father was a soldier with the Northern Army in
Virginia, and Mrs. Delfield had taken her little daughter and come to
her old home in Maryland hoping that her husband might secure leave of
absence and join them.
It was now nearly a month since Roxy had first seen Polly Lawrence,
whose father’s farm adjoined the Millers’. Polly had at once made
friends with the little Northern girl, and although she was nearly five
years older than Roxy, she seemed to enjoy her company and had taken the
little Northern girl on many a pleasant ride about the countryside, and
on walks over the pasture-lands that stretched up the slopes behind the
farms. It was Polly who told Roxy that the river had been named Antietam
for an Indian chief, and that years before the white men had settled in
this part of the country the Shawnee, Catawba and Delaware Indians, with
feathered heads, painted faces, and clad in the skins of wild animals,
had wandered along the banks of this placid stream and camped in the
near-by valleys.
“But Polly has always called me ‘Yankee girl,’” Roxy told herself,
choking back a troublesome lump that came in her throat as she
remembered that she had quarrelled with Polly Lawrence; with Polly, who