midnight
But the smiling reply was Spartan : `` Oh ! what are such trifles when we think how our own fathers , husbands , and brothers have suffered -- even in victory ! '' The `` Sisters '' were still living on last summer 's glory , and only by such indirections alluded to defeats . Anna smiled as brightly as any , while through her mind flitted spectral visions of the secondary and so needless carnage in those awful field-hospitals behind the battles , and of the storms so likely to follow the fights , when the midnight rain came down in sheets on the wounded still lying among the dead . On all the teeming , bleeding front no father , husband , or brother was hers , but amid the multitudinous exploits and agonies her thoughts were ever on him who , by no tie but the heart 's , had in the past year grown to be father , mother , sister , and brother to the superb hundred whom she so tenderly knew , who so worshipingly knew her , and still whose lives , at every chance , he was hurling at the foe as stones from a sling . `` After all , in these terrible time ' , '' remarked Miss Valcour in committee of the whole -- last session before the public opening -- `` any toil , even look ' at selfishly , is better than to be idle . '' `` As if you ever looked at anything selfishly ! ''