“Be quiet, father,” says Mona. “You know what the doctor said. Besides, is it Christian-like to follow the sins of a man to the next world and wish his soul in hell?”
But when she is alone in her own room she knows that her Christian charity is all a delusion.
“Oh God help me! God help me! Send me something to help me,” she cries.
One morning in summer the Commandant calls on her father and she leads him upstairs. He takes a little leather-covered case out of his pocket and, opening it by its spring, shows a military medal.
“What is it?” asks the old man.
“The Victoria Cross, old friend, won by your son for conspicuous bravery in battle and sent to you by the King.”
The old man wipes his eyes and says: “But who is to wear it now that Robbie is gone?”
“May I make a suggestion?” says the Commandant. “Let your daughter wear it. Why not?”
“Yes, yes, why not?” says Mona, and she seizes it convulsively and pins it on her breast.
Next morning, feeling braver, with the medal on her breast, she looks Oskar Heine full in the face when he comes to the dairy door as usual. He sees it and asks what it is and where it came from, and with a proud lift of the head she tells him, almost defiantly, about Robbie and what he did at the war.