"What we want," Alice said, "is something that will be a good deal of trouble to us and some good to her."
"A little help is worth a deal of poetry," said Denny.
I should not have said that myself. Noel did look sick.
"What DOES she do that we can help in?" Dora asked. "Besides, she won"t let us help."
H. O. said, "She does nothing but work in the garden. At least if she does anything inside you can"t see it, because she keeps the door shut."
Then at once we saw. And we agreed to get up the very next day, ere yet the rosy dawn had flushed the east, and have a go at Mrs Simpkins"s garden.
We got up. We really did. But too often when you mean to, overnight, it seems so silly to do it when you come to waking in the dewy morn. We crept downstairs with our boots in our hands. Denny is rather unlucky, though a most careful boy. It was he who dropped his boot, and it went blundering down the stairs, echoing like thunderbolts, and waking up Albert"s uncle. But when we explained to him that we were going to do some gardening he let us, and went back to bed.
Everything is very pretty and different in the early morning, before people are up. I have been told this is because the shadows go a different way from what they do in the awake part of the day. But I don"t know. Noel says the fairies have just finished tidying up then.
Anyhow it all feels quite otherwise.
We put on our boots in the porch, and we got our gardening tools and we went down to the white cottage. It is a nice cottage, with a thatched roof, like in the drawing copies you get at girls" schools, and you do the thatch--if you can--with a B.B. pencil. If you cannot, you just leave it. It looks just as well, somehow, when it is mounted and framed.
We looked at the garden. It was very neat. Only one patch was coming up thick with weeds. I could see groundsel and chickweed, and others that I did not know. We set to work with a will. We used all our tools--spades, forks, hoes, and rakes--and Dora worked with the trowel, sitting down, because her foot was hurt. We cleared the weedy patch beautifully, sc.r.a.ping off all the nasty weeds and leaving the nice clean brown dirt.
We worked as hard as ever we could. And we were happy, because it was unselfish toil, and no one thought then of putting it in the Book of Golden Deeds, where we had agreed to write down our virtuous actions and the good doings of each other, when we happen to notice them.
We had just done, and we were looking at the beautiful production of our honest labour, when the cottage door burst open, and the soldier"s widowed mother came out like a wild tornado, and her eyes looked like upas trees--death to the beholder.
"You wicked, meddlesome, nasty children!" she said, ain"t you got enough of your own good ground to runch up and spoil, but you must come into MY little lot?"
Some of us were deeply alarmed, but we stood firm.
"We have only been weeding your garden," Dora said; "we wanted to do something to help you."
"Dratted little busybodies," she said. It was indeed hard, but everyone in Kent says "dratted" when they are cross. "It"s my turnips," she went on, "you"ve hoed up, and my cabbages. My turnips that my boy sowed afore he went. There, get along with you do, afore I come at you with my broom-handle."
She did come at us with her broom-handle as she spoke, and even the boldest turned and fled. Oswald was even the boldest. "They looked like weeds right enough," he said.
And d.i.c.ky said, "It all comes of trying to do golden deeds." This was when we were out in the road.
As we went along, in a silence full of gloomy remorse, we met the postman. He said--
"Here"s the letters for the Moat," and pa.s.sed on hastily. He was a bit late.
When we came to look through the letters, which were nearly all for Albert"s uncle, we found there was a postcard that had got stuck in a magazine wrapper. Alice pulled it out. It was addressed to Mrs Simpkins.
We honourably only looked at the address, although it is allowed by the rules of honourableness to read postcards that come to your house if you like, even if they are not for you.
After a heated discussion, Alice and Oswald said they were not afraid, whoever was, and they retraced their steps, Alice holding the postcard right way up, so that we should not look at the lettery part of it, but only the address.
With quickly-beating heart, but outwardly unmoved, they walked up to the white cottage door.
It opened with a bang when we knocked.
"Well?" Mrs Simpkins said, and I think she said it what people in books call "sourly".
Oswald said, "We are very, very sorry we spoiled your turnips, and we will ask my father to try and make it up to you some other way."
She muttered something about not wanting to be beholden to anybody.
"We came back," Oswald went on, with his always unruffled politeness, "because the postman gave us a postcard in mistake with our letters, and it is addressed to you."
"We haven"t read it," Alice said quickly. I think she needn"t have said that. Of course we hadn"t. But perhaps girls know better than we do what women are likely to think you capable of.
The soldier"s mother took the postcard (she s.n.a.t.c.hed it really, but "took" is a kinder word, considering everything) and she looked at the address a long time. Then she turned it over and read what was on the back. Then she drew her breath in as far as it would go, and caught hold of the door-post. Her face got awful. It was like the wax face of a dead king I saw once at Madame Tussaud"s.
Alice understood. She caught hold of the soldier"s mother"s hand and said--
"Oh, NO--it"s NOT your boy Bill!"
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 ap.r.o.ns 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."