‘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.