Page 78 - Among the camps, or, Young people's stories of the war

or a i r a n c r p a n s y . "

was the reason why when the war broke out, and all the

other men went into the army, the old doctor, who was too
old and feeble to go himself, but had sent his only son
Harry, was chosen by tacit consent as Middleburgh's general
adviser and guardian. Thus it was lie who had to advise
Mrs, Latimer, the druggist’s wife, how to keep the little
apothecary's shop at the corner of the Court-house Square

after her husband went into the arm y; and it was he who
advised Mrs. Seddon to keep the post-office in the little
building at the bottom of her lawn, which had served as her
husband s law office before he went off to the war at the head

of the Mtddlebursfh Artillery. He even "ave valuable assist-
ance as well as advice to Mrs. Hippin about curing her
chickens of the gapes ; and to iNancy Pansy's great astonish­
ment had several times performed a most remarkable oper­
ation by inserting a hair from old Slouch’s mane down the

invalid's little stretched throat.
He used to go around the town nearly every afternoon,
seeing the healthy as well as the sick, and giving advice as
well as physic, both being taken with equal confidence. It
was what he called “ reviewing his out-posts,11 and he used to

explain to Nancy Pansy that that was the way her father and
his Harry did in their camp. Nancy Pansy did not wholly
understand him, but she knew it was something that was just
right; so she nodded gravely, and said. " Umh-hmh !.N
It was not hard to get a doll the first year of the war, but

before the second year was half over there was not one left