“Oh!” cried out the child, stamping her little foot, as Derwie, breathless himself, paused in his tale—“oh! if I had only a gun, I would take hold of papa’s hand and shoot them all!”
“Ah!” cried Emmy, whose thoughts had been doubtless following the same track, and to whom this sudden sense of a want which, perhaps, she scarcely realized in ordinary times, came sharp in sudden contrast with that exclamation of Clary’s—“Ah, Clary!” cried the poor child, with a shrill accent in the momentary pang it gave her, “but we have no papa.” It struck me like a sudden passionate, artless postscript of personal grief, striking its key-note upon the big impersonal calamity which raised, even in these children’s bosoms, such generous horror and indignation.
“He was killed in India,” said Di, in a low tone, her womanly little face growing dark with a sudden twilight of feeling more serious than her years.
“They don’t want us to fight,” said Derwie, whom this personal digression did not withdraw from his main interest; “you may be sure, Clary, they don’t want a little thing like you, or me, or Willie; to be sure, if we had been older!—but never mind, there’s sure to be somebody to fight with when we’re big enough; and then there’s such famous fellows there—there’s Sam Rivers, I was telling you of, that Huntingdonshire man; I know his mother, I’ll take you to see her, if you like; and there’s Bertie—there’s our Bertie, don’t you know?—he’ll never come home till they’re all safe, or till he’s killed.”
“If he’s killed he’ll never come back,” said Willie Sedgwick.
“Oh, I wish you would go away, you horrid great boy!” cried Clary, indignantly—“Killed! when you know mamma is so fond of Mrs. Crofton’s Bertie, and loves him as much as Uncle Maurice!—but Willie doesn’t care for anything,” she said, in an aggrieved tone, turning away from her brother with a disgust which I slightly shared.
“I could bear him to be killed,” said Derwie, who, poor child, had never seen the hero he discussed, “if he did something worth while first—like that one, you know, who blew himself up, or that one”——
“But, Derwie, what was the good of blowing himself up,” said Clary, with wondering round eyes.
“Don’t you see?” cried Derwie, impatiently; “why, to destroy the powder and things, to be sure, that they might not have it to fire at us.”
“I’d have poured water all on the powder, if it had been me, and spoiled it without hurting any one,” said the prudent Willie.