You'd better rethink your position, then....Chapter 21
ONE:"Great Jehosephat," he said, turning them over for careful inspection. "Ain't this a puddin'? Just the thing to give the Cap. He got his smashed with a bullet comin' through the abatis, and's bin mournin' about 'em ever since. These is better'n his was, and he'll be ticked to death to git 'em."
"Lay down, there, old man; grab a root; keep under cover, or you'll git hit," some of them called out to him, noticing him as they turned to load. "The air is so full o' bullets you kin ketch your hat full if you only hold it up."Therefore he was always called upon whenever there was nothing else to engage the men's attention, and his self-confidence and vanity grew rapidly upon the liberal applause bestowed on him. He was a capital mimic, too, and daring as well, and it was not long before he began to "take off" those around him, which his comrades enjoyed even more than his declamations.In the entire squad of 65 there were not more than half a dozen bearded men. The rest were boys, all clearly under their majority, and many seeming not over 15. There were tall, lathy boys, with tallowy faces; there were short, stocky boys, with big legs and arms and fat faces as red as ripe apples, and there were boys neither very fat nor very lean, but active and sprightly as cats. They were in the majority. Long and short, fat and lean, they were all bubbling over with animal spirits and activity, and eager to get where they could see "real war.""Yes, the orders to move has come," said Shorty. "See them big fires, and the boys burnin' up things.""Sich plaguey conceit," muttered Si."In my haversack," said Jim ruefully, after they had entered the mill, and he had run his hand into his forgotten haversack, and withdrawn it covered with a viscid greasy mush. "My haversack's full o' water, that's soaked everything else in it to a gruel."
