"However did you manage to come back?"
Mrs. Yellam listened, waiting, hoping, and almost believing, that an answer would be forthcoming. Her son, according to Colonel Tring, had been killed by a shell—killed and obliterated. She had known that death must have been painless.
Fancy answered for Alfred, in a whisper that seemed to come from an immense distance.
"I hear you, plain as plain. What? A—shell—! Did it hurt, Alfie? It didn't. But because of that you were able to come. You had to come for both our sakes—Mother's and mine. And such a night! You ain't a bit wet, neither.... Afraid, Alfie...? With you holding me tight as tight.... Oh, no."
Susan Yellam heard a trickle of laughter. After that Fancy sighed twice, and then her small body relaxed.
She had slipped away.
* * * * *
Dawn was stealing into the kitchen when Mrs. Yellam went downstairs.
She was still curiously alert in mind, although very weary in body. After she had closed Fancy's eyes and performed the last services, she sat down by the bed to think. Dying people, as she knew, might entertain hallucinations. And Fancy, in health, exercised a lively imagination. That she should believe that she saw Alfred, so long and ardently desired, just before breath left her body, was not remarkable in itself.
But, speaking for Alfred, repeating, as it were, information, Fancy had used the word "shell."