Downstairs in the kitchen department of the house there was a great and unwonted silence that made itself felt even in our rooms. The servants knew and were sorry. One of them had known him for eight years, another for four and yet another for two; and their unnatural silence and stillness had a meaning which struck a chill to my heart.
Then, the ten minutes being over, he got up and kissed us good-bye all round. A curious look came on his face as he saw the tears in his father's eyes brim over. He went out very suddenly, walking a little blindly.
He would have no one go to the station with him. For one thing, he was not going there immediately, and, secondly, he always hated being seen off by anyone that he loved.
And six days later, at eight o'clock in the morning, a telegram came to us, sent by him from Folkestone:
"Am crossing to-night."
As I have said before, I buried my face in the pillow and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
For it is in the beginning that the great Fear comes and grips and chills.
I was glad Old Nurse was dead, and also Tita, the black Skye terrier. The dog had loved him so! She had always been haggard and wretched when she had seen his luggage packed for going back to school at the beginning of each term, and now she would surely have known somehow that he had gone to the war.
"Oh, Little Yeogh Wough!" I cried out in my heart. "I have guarded you so much always—so much!—and now I can't guard you any more. Now already your glad young feet are marching over French ground, carrying you on—on—perhaps to your death."
And then began for us all a different life; a life of heart hunger. We hungered to hear the Boy's laugh, to hear the peculiar call he gave when he wanted his younger brother to help him with his dressing, or his half-mischievous, half-playfully tender inquiry of his father as to whether he could have the first supply of the hot bath water. We wandered about like lost souls until his first letter came. And one vivid sentence in it showed us that he had reached the danger zone: