her brother in a masterful way, “I just thought I’d bring everything. Now help me dress the bird—no, you go dig the grave—we must hurry, for it’s ’most our tea time. Go to the back door for a shovel.”
Freddie did as he was bidden and, finding the frozen earth too hard for his small coal shovel, he dug a good-sized grave in a big snow bank on the lawn.
“Now take the book,” said his sister, “and read the service. I can’t, ’cause I’m a girl.”
“She’d run the city if she could,” said Chummy in my ear. “She’s a terror, is that one.”
The boy with many corrections from his sister mumbled something, then she said, “For hymn we’ll have, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning.’”
Freddie looked shocked. “That’s for soldiers,” he said, “not for funerals.”
“We’ll have ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’” she repeated.
“We’ll have ‘Down in the Deep Black Ground,’” he insisted.
Suddenly she lost her temper, slapped him in the face, threw the flowers at him, and ran into the house.
“Good!” said Chummy. “There’s some stuff in the boy, after all.”