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 d.i.c.ky tried, and then Denny, but d.i.c.ky 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.
The soldier"s mother read it, and said something about our oughting to know better than to make fun of people"s troubles with our tombstones and tomfoolery.
Alice told me she could not help crying.
She said--
"It"s not! it"s NOT! Dear, DEAR Mrs Simpkins, do come with me and see!
You don"t know how sorry we are about Bill. Do come and see.
We can go through the churchyard, and the others have all gone in, so as to leave it quiet for you. Do come."
And Mrs Simpkins did. And when she read what we had put up, and Alice told her the verse we had not had room for, she leant against the wall by the grave--I mean the tombstone--and Alice hugged her, and they both cried bitterly. The poor soldier"s mother was very, very pleased, and she forgave us about the turnips, and we were friends after that, but she always liked Alice the best. A great many people do, somehow.
After that we used to put fresh flowers every day on Bill"s tombstone, and I do believe his mother was pleased, though she got us to move it away from the churchyard edge and put it in a corner of our garden under a laburnum, where people could not see it from the church. But you could from the road, though I think she thought you couldn"t. She came every day to look at the new wreaths. When the white flowers gave out we put coloured, and she liked it just as well.
About a fortnight after the erecting of the tombstone the girls were putting fresh wreaths on it when a soldier in a red coat came down the road, and he stopped and looked at us. He walked with a stick, and he had a bundle in a blue cotton handkerchief, and one arm in a sling.
And he looked again, and he came nearer, and he leaned on the wall, so that he could read the black printing on the white paint.
And he grinned all over his face, and he said--
"Well, I AM blessed!"
And he read it all out in a sort of half whisper, and when he came to the end, where it says, "and all such brave soldiers", he said--
"Well, I really AM!" I suppose he meant he really was blessed. Oswald thought it was like the soldier"s cheek, so he said--
"I daresay you aren"t so very blessed as you think. What"s it to do with you, anyway, eh, Tommy?"
Of course Oswald knew from Kipling that an infantry soldier is called that. The soldier said--
"Tommy yourself, young man. That"s ME!" and he pointed to the tombstone.
We stood rooted to the spot. Alice spoke first.
"Then you"re Bill, and you"re not dead," she said. "Oh, Bill, I am so glad! Do let ME tell your mother."
She started running, and so did we all. Bill had to go slowly because of his leg, but I tell you he went as fast as ever he could.
We all hammered at the soldier"s mother"s door, and shouted--
"Come out! come out!" and when she opened the door we were going to speak, but she pushed us away, and went tearing down the garden path like winking. I never saw a grown-up woman run like it, because she saw Bill coming.
She met him at the gate, running right into him, and caught hold of him, and she cried much more than when she thought he was dead.
And we all shook his hand and said how glad we were.
The soldier"s mother kept hold of him with both hands, and I couldn"t help looking at her face. It was like wax that had been painted on both pink cheeks, and the eyes shining like candles. And when we had all said how glad we were, she said--
"Thank the dear Lord for His mercies," and she took her boy Bill into the cottage and shut the door.
We went home and chopped up the tombstone with the wood-axe and had a blazing big bonfire, and cheered till we could hardly speak.
The postcard was a mistake; he was only missing. There was a pipe and a whole pound of tobacco left over from our keepsake to the other soldiers. We gave it to Bill. Father is going to have him for under-gardener when his wounds get well. He"ll always be a bit lame, so he cannot fight any more.
CHAPTER 4. THE TOWER OF MYSTERY
It was very rough on Dora having her foot bad, but we took it in turns to stay in with her, and she was very decent about it. Daisy was most with her. I do not dislike Daisy, but I wish she had been taught how to play. Because Dora is rather like that naturally, and sometimes I have thought that Daisy makes her worse.
I talked to Albert"s uncle about it one day, when the others had gone to church, and I did not go because of ear-ache, and he said it came from reading the wrong sort of books partly--she has read Ministering Children, and Anna Ross, or The Orphan of Waterloo, and Ready Work for Willing Hands, and Elsie, or Like a Little Candle, and even a horrid little blue book about the something or other of Little Sins. After this conversation Oswald took care she had plenty of the right sort of books to read, and he was surprised and pleased when she got up early one morning to finish Monte Cristo. Oswald felt that he was really being useful to a suffering fellow-creature when he gave Daisy books that were not all about being good.