A Yankee Girl at Shiloh

								

clothing; but they had not believed a great war was so close at hand,
a war that was to impoverish the Southern States and to make it nearly
impossible for people to procure suitable clothing; and at the close
of their second year in their mountain cabin the Arnolds began to
realize that they must take good care of their garments, as they could
not purchase new material in the town of Corinth. With the Braggs
conditions were more difficult, as they had never possessed decent
clothing; such dresses as Mrs. Bragg had managed to secure for herself
and Mollie were worn to rags. Mrs. Arnold had given Mrs. Bragg a dress
of stout gingham; but poor little Mollie ran about in a thin worn
calico. Mrs. Arnold was teaching the little girl to knit a jacket for
herself of the fine blue yarn that her mother spun, and, with a dress
of serge, Mollie would soon be comfortably clothed.
When the last stitches were set and Mollie’s dress was quite finished,
Berry carried the serge blouse and skirt into her own room, which
opened from the sitting-room, and that was as pleasant a chamber as
any little girl could ask. The floor of the room, like all the cabin
floors, was painted yellow. The walls and ceiling were boarded with
pine, whose soft color blended with the floor. Mr. Arnold and Francis
had built this room on to the cabin, and its wide window overlooked
the deep ravine toward Lick Creek. But a tall oak tree grew so close
to the cabin on this side as to hide the little building from sight,
and when Berry looked from her window she looked out between the
branches of the trees toward rough banks and wooded ridges. Mr. Arnold
had made the simple white bedstead that stood in Berry’s room, and the
dressing-table, over which hung a small square mirror. And Francis had
built the box-like window-seat, which Mrs. Arnold had covered with
flowered chintz which she had brought with her from the North, and
had made curtains for the window of the same material. A white rug of
sheepskin lay beside the bed, and there was a chest of drawers in one
corner of the room, and a small wooden rocking-chair painted white.
Berry put Mollie’s new dress in the lower drawer of the wide chest
and looked at it admiringly. Then, from a far corner of the drawer
she took a long package wrapped in a piece of newspaper—for tissue
and wrapping paper were not easy to obtain in that part of the world
in 1862—and unrolled it, and a small doll appeared, a doll made of
cloth, whose hair was of yarn raveled from the foot of an old brown
stocking; whose eyes were black buttons, and whose scarlet mouth had
been marked by beet juice. The doll wore a gay dress made of bits of
yellow silk from Mrs. Arnold’s scrap-bag. Her feet were covered with
kid shoes, made from a worn-out glove, and the little hat, tied on
with a bit of yellow silk, Berry had made by plaiting dried grasses.
“Mollie will like this doll, too,” Berry thought happily, as she