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‘Then that’s all right,’ said Mary. ‘Thank you very much.’

They moved away as Mrs. Grant flung herself weeping on Mary’s flat chest, under the lych-gate, and cried, ‘I know how it feels! I know how it feels!’

‘But both his parents are dead,’ Mary returned, as she fended her off. ‘Perhaps they’ve all met by now,’ she added vaguely as she escaped towards the coach.

‘I’ve thought of that too,’ wailed Mrs. Grant; ‘but then he’ll be practically a stranger to them. Quite embarrassing!’

Mary faithfully reported every detail of the ceremony to Miss Fowler, who, when she described Mrs. Grant’s outburst, laughed aloud.

‘Oh, how Wynn would have enjoyed it! He was always utterly unreliable at funerals. D’you remember–‘ And they talked of him again, each piecing out the other’s gaps. ‘And now,’ said Miss Fowler, ‘we’ll pull up the blinds and we’ll have a general tidy. That always does us good. Have you seen to Wynn’s things?’

‘Everything–since he first came,’ said Mary. ‘He was never destructive–even with his toys.’

They faced that neat room.

‘It can’t be natural not to cry,’ Mary said at last. ‘I’m so afraid you’ll have a reaction.’

‘As I told you, we old people slip from under the stroke. It’s you I’m afraid for. Have you cried yet?’

‘I can’t. It only makes me angry with the Germans.’

‘That’s sheer waste of vitality,’ said Miss Fowler. ‘We must live till the war’s finished.’ She opened a full wardrobe. ‘Now, I’ve been thinking things over. This is my plan. All his civilian clothes can be given away–Belgian refugees, and so on.’

Mary nodded. ‘Boots, collars, and gloves?’

‘Yes. We don’t need to keep anything except his cap and belt.’

‘They came back yesterday with his Flying Corps clothes’–Mary pointed to a roll on the little iron bed.

‘Ah, but keep his Service things. Some one may be glad of them later. Do you remember his sizes?’

‘Five feet eight and a half; thirty-six inches round the chest. But he told me he’s just put on an inch and a half. I’ll mark it on a label and tie it on his sleeping-bag.’

‘So that disposes of that,’ said Miss Fowler, tapping the palm of one hand with the ringed third finger of the other. ‘What waste it all is! We’ll get his old school trunk to-morrow and pack his civilian clothes.’

‘And the rest?’ said Mary. ‘His books and pictures and the games and the toys–and–and the rest?’

‘My plan is to burn every single thing,’ said Miss Fowler. ‘Then we shall know where they are and no one can handle them afterwards. What do you think?’

‘I think that would be much the best,’ said Mary. ‘But there’s such a lot of them.’

‘We’ll burn them in the destructor,’ said Miss Fowler.

This was an open-air furnace for the consumption of refuse; a little circular four-foot tower of pierced brick over an iron grating. Miss Fowler had noticed the design in a gardening journal years ago, and had had it built at the bottom of the garden. It suited her tidy soul, for it saved unsightly rubbish-heaps, and the ashes lightened the stiff clay soil.

Mary considered for a moment, saw her way clear, and nodded again. They spent the evening putting away well-remembered civilian suits, underclothes that Mary had marked, and the regiments of very gaudy socks and ties. A second trunk was needed, and, after that, a little packing-case, and it was late next day when Cheape and the local carrier lifted them to the cart. The Rector luckily knew of a friend’s son, about five feet eight and a half inches high, to whom a complete Flying Corps outfit would be most acceptable, and sent his gardener’s son down with a barrow to take delivery of it. The cap was hung up in Miss Fowler’s bedroom, the belt in Miss Postgate’s; for, as Miss Fowler said, they had no desire to make tea-party talk of them.

‘That disposes of that,’ said Miss Fowler. ‘I’ll leave the rest to you, Mary. I can’t run up and down the garden. You’d better take the big clothes-basket and get Nellie to help you.’