“What for?”
“We thought it sounded more like her—like somethin’ movin’ slow, in armour.”
“Oh! And she read your letters to your mother, did she?”
“Every time the post came in she’d slip across the road from opposite an’ read ’em. An’—an’ I’ll go bail for it that that was all there was to it for as far back as I remember. Was I to swing to-morrow, I’d go bail for that! ’Tisn’t fair of ’em to ’ave unloaded it all on me, because—because—if the dead do rise, why, what in ’ell becomes of me an’ all I’ve believed all me life? I want to know that! I—I——”
But Keede would not be put off. “Did the Sergeant give you away at all in his letters?” he demanded, very quietly.
“There was nothin’ to give away—we was too busy—but his letters about me were a great comfort to Ma. I’m no good at writin’. I saved it all up for my leafs. I got me fourteen days every six months an’ one over.... I was luckier than most, that way.”
“And when you came home, used you to bring ’em news about the Sergeant?” said Keede.
“I expect I must have; but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was took up with me own affairs—naturally. Uncle John always wrote to me once each leaf, tellin’ me what was doin’ an’ what I was li’ble to expect on return, an’ Ma ’ud ’ave that read to her. Then o’ course I had to slip over to his wife an’ pass her the news. An’ then there was the young lady that I’d thought of marryin’ if I came through. We’d got as far as pricin’ things in the windows together.”
“And you didn’t marry her—after all?”
Another tremor shook the boy. “No!” he cried. “’Fore it ended, I knew what reel things reelly mean! I—I never dreamed such things could be!... An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt!... But there wasn’t a sign nor a hint from first to last, so ’ow could I tell? Don’t you see it? All she said to me after me Christmas leaf in ’18, when I come to say good-bye—all Auntie Armine said to me was: ‘You’ll be seein’ Mister Godsoe soon?’ ‘Too soon for my likings,’ I says. ‘Well then, tell ’im from me,’ she says, ‘that I expect to be through with my little trouble by the twenty-first of next month, an’ I’m dyin’ to see him as soon as possible after that date.’”