FullReads

We had just done, and we were looking at the beautiful production of our honest labor, 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 every one 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 Dicky 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 passed 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 post-card that had got stuck in a magazine wrapper. Alice pulled it out. It was addressed to Mrs. Simpkins. We honorably only looked at the address, although it is allowed by the rules of honorableness to read post-cards 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 post-card 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 post-card 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 post-card (she snatched 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 post-card 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.