And the woman said nothing, but shoved the postcard into Alice's hand, and we both read it--and it WAS her boy Bill.
Alice gave her back the card. She had held on to the woman's hand all the time, and now she squeezed the hand, and held it against her face. But she could not say a word because she was crying so.
The soldier's mother took the card again and she pushed Alice away, but it was not an unkind push, and she went in and shut the door; and as Alice and Oswald went down the road Oswald looked back, and one of the windows of the cottage had a white blind. Afterwards the other windows had too. There were no blinds really to the cottage. It was aprons and things she had pinned up.
Alice cried most of the morning, and so did the other girls. We wanted to do something for the soldier's mother, but you can do nothing when people's sons are shot. It is the most dreadful thing to want to do something for people who are unhappy, and not to know what to do.
It was Noel who thought of what we COIULD do at last.
He said, 'I suppose they don't put up tombstones to soldiers when they die in war. But there--I mean Oswald said, 'Of course not.'
Noel said, 'I daresay you'll think it's silly, but I don't care.
Don't you think she'd like it, if we put one up to HIM? Not in the churchyard, of course, because we shouldn't be let, but in our garden, just where it joins on to the churchyard?'
And we all thought it was a first-rate idea.
This is what we meant to put on the tombstone:
'Here lies BILL SIMPKINS Who died fighting for Queen and Country.'
'A faithful son, A son so dear, A soldier brave Lies buried here.'
Then we remembered that poor brave Bill was really buried far away in the Southern hemisphere, if at all. So we altered it to--'A soldier brave We weep for here.'
Then we looked out a nice flagstone in the stable-yard, and we got a cold chisel out of the Dentist's toolbox, and began.
But stone-cutting is difficult and dangerous work.
Oswald went at it a bit, but he chipped his thumb, and it bled so he had to chuck it. Then Dicky tried, and then Denny, but Dicky hammered his finger, and Denny took all day over every stroke, so that by tea-time we had only done the H, and about half the E--and the E was awfully crooked. Oswald chipped his thumb over the H.
We looked at it the next morning, and even the most sanguinary of us saw that it was a hopeless task.
Then Denny said, 'Why not wood and paint?' and he showed us how.
We got a board and two stumps from the carpenter's in the village, and we painted it all white, and when that was dry Denny did the words on it.
It was something like this:
'IN MEMORY OF BILL SIMPKINS DEAD FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY.
HONOUR TO HIS NAME AND ALL OTHER BRAVE SOLDIERS.'
We could not get in what we meant to at first, so we had to give up the poetry.
We fixed it up when it was dry. We had to dig jolly deep to get the posts to stand up, but the gardener helped us.
Then the girls made wreaths of white flowers, roses and Canterbury bells, and lilies and pinks, and sweet-peas and daisies, and put them over the posts. And I think if Bill Simpkins had known how sorry we were, he would have been glad. Oswald only hopes if he falls on the wild battlefield, which is his highest ambition, that somebody will be as sorry about him as he was about Bill, that's all!
When all was done, and what flowers there were over from the wreaths scattered under the tombstone between the posts, we wrote a letter to Mrs Simpkins, and said--DEAR MRS SIMPKINS--We are very, very sorry about the turnips and things, and we beg your pardon humbly. We have put up a tombstone to your brave son.
And we signed our names. Alice took the letter.
