She went down to the kitchen, to find Harry, his eyes big and blurred with sleep, just going to set about his business in the yard. Moved by a quake of tenderness for this surviving son, she made him a cup of cocoa, and insisted on his drinking it before he went out to work. Then she did her own scrubbing with more care than usual—“Reckon we must kip the farm up, now he’s agone.” Urged by the same thought she went out to the Dutch barn and mixed the chicken food, then opened the hen-houses, feeling in the warm nests for eggs.
By now the sun was high, a big blazing pan slopping fire over the roofs and into the ponds. The air was full of sounds—crowings, cacklings, cluckings, the scurry of fowls, the stamping of horses, and then the whining hiss of milk into zinc pails. Hoofs thudded in the lane, the call of a girl came from a distant field, all the country of the Four Roads was waking to life and work, faltering no more than light and darkness because one of its sons had died for the fields he used to plough. Wheels crunched in the drive, and then came the postman’s knock. Mrs. Beatup put down her trug of meal, and waddled off towards the house ... perhaps a letter had come about Tom; it was rather early yet, still, perhaps it had come.
But Harry had already been to the door, and shook his head when she asked if there was anything for her.
“Thur’s naun.”
“Naun fur none of us?”
“Only fur me.”
She saw that he was carrying a long, official-looking envelope, and that his hand was clenched round it, as if he held a knife.
“Wot’s that?”