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.
Alice cried most the morning, and so did the other girls. We wanted to do something for the soldier's mother, but you can do nothing when people's sons are shot. It is the most dreadful thing to want to do something for people who are unhappy, and not to know what to do.
It was Noël who thought of what we could do at last.
He said, "I suppose they don't put up tombstones to soldiers when they die in war. But there—I mean—"
Oswald said, "Of course not."
Noël said, "I dare say you'll think it's silly, but I don't care. Don't you think she'd like it if we put one up to him? Not in the church-yard, of course, because we shouldn't be let, but in our garden, just where it joins on to the church-yard?"
And we all thought it was a first-rate idea.