"No, he won't needer!" exclaimed Aunt Candace.
"How come?" asked her son.
"Kaze he ain't gwine, dat 's how come!"
Plato shook his head significantly, as if his mammy's decision settled the whole matter. Still he was puzzled at the alleged willingness of his mistress and Miss Floe to allow Jack to be carried off by the Yankee army.
Dr. Pruden, the surgeon, was also worried with a problem he could not fathom, and puzzled by a great many things he could not understand. The problem was not very serious, as matters go in time of war, but it was very interesting. Why should these Southern ladies, who, his instinct told him, had very bitter prejudices against the Northern people, and especially against the Union soldiers, betray such interest in Captain Jarvis of New York? And not interest only, but genuine solicitude, that they sought in vain to conceal? The surgeon was a young man, not more than twenty-five or thirty years old, but he had knocked about a good deal, and, as he said to himself, he was no fool. In fact, he had a pretty good knowledge of human nature, and a reasonably quick eye for "symptoms."
