‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘you are a hero!’
* * * * *
Sidney’s hand was bad for ever so long, but we were tremendous chums after that.
It was when they’d done the hand up with scraped potato and salad oil—a great, big, fat, wet plaster of it—that I said to him:
‘I don’t care if you don’t like games. Let’s
be pals.’
[p217]
And he said, ‘I do like games, but I couldn’t care about anything with mother so ill. I know you’ll think I’m a muff, but I’m not really, only I do love her so.’
And with that he began to cry, and I thumped him on the back, and told him exactly what a beast I knew I was, to comfort him.
When Aunt Ellie was well again we kept Christmas on the 6th of January, which used to be Christmas Day in middle-aged times.
Father came home before New Year, and he had a silver medal made, with a flame on one side, and on the other Sidney’s name, and ‘For Bravery.’