Letty's face changed in those pitiful weeks when she was denying death. She lost her pretty colour, she became white; her mouth grew hard and her eyes had a hard brightness. She never wept, she never gave a sign of sorrow, and she insisted upon talking about Teddy, in a dry offhand voice. Constantly she referred to his final return. "Teddy," she said, "will be surprised at this," or "Teddy will feel sold when he sees how I have altered that."
"Presently we shall see his name in a list of prisoners," she said. "He is a wounded prisoner in Germany."
She adopted that story. She had no justification for it, but she would hear no doubts upon it. She presently began to prepare parcels to send him. "They want almost everything," she told people. "They are treated abominably. He has not been able to write to me yet, but I do not think I ought to wait until he asks me."
Cissie was afraid to interfere with this.
After a time Letty grew impatient at the delay in getting any address and took her first parcel to the post office.
"Unless you know what prison he is at," said the postmistress.
"Pity!" said Letty. "I don't know that. Must it wait for that? I thought the Germans were so systematic that it didn't matter."
The postmistress made tedious explanations that Letty did not seem to hear. She stared straight in front of her at nothing. Then in a pause in the conversation she picked up her parcel.
"It's tiresome for him to have to wait," she said. "But it can't be long before I know."
She took the parcel back to the cottage.