But stone-cutting is difficult and dangerous work.
Oswald went at it a bit, but he chipped his thumb, and it bled so he had to chuck it. Then Dicky tried, and then Denny, but Dicky hammered his finger, and Denny took all day over every stroke, so that by tea-time we had only done the H, and about half the E—and the E was awfully crooked. Oswald chipped his thumb over the H.
We looked at it the next morning, and even the most sanguinary of us saw that it was a hopeless task.
Then Denny said, "Why not wood and paint?" and he showed us how. We got a board and two stumps from the carpenter's in the village, and we painted it all white, and when that was dry Denny did the words on it.
It was something like this:
"In Memory of BILL SIMPKINS
Dead for Queen & Country
Honor to his name and all
other brave soldiers."
We could not get in what we meant to at first, so we had to give up the poetry.
We fixed it up when it was dry. We had to dig jolly deep to get the posts to stand up, but the gardener helped us.
Then the girls made wreaths of white flowers, roses and canterbury bells, and lilies and pinks, and sweet pease and daisies, and put them over the posts, like you see in the picture. And I think if Bill Simpkins had known how sorry we were, he would have been glad. Oswald only hopes if he falls on the wild battle-field, which is his highest ambition, that somebody will be as sorry about him as he was about Bill, that's all!
When all was done, and what flowers there were over from the wreaths scattered under the tombstone between the posts, we wrote a letter to Mrs. Simpkins, and said: