Oswald went at it a bit, but he chipped his thumb, and it bled so
he had to chuck it. Then Dicky tried, and then Denny, but Dicky
hammered his finger, and Denny took all day over every stroke, so
that by tea-time we had only done the H, and about half the E--and
the E was awfully crooked. Oswald chipped his thumb over the H.

We looked at it the next morning, and even the most sanguinary of
us saw that it was a hopeless task.

Then Denny said, 'Why not wood and paint?' and he showed us how.
We got a board and two stumps from the carpenter's in the village,
and we painted it all white, and when that was dry Denny did the
words on it.

It was something like this:

'IN MEMORY OF
BILL SIMPKINS

DEAD FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY.

HONOUR TO HIS NAME AND ALL

OTHER BRAVE SOLDIERS.'


We could not get in what we meant to at first, so we had to give up
the poetry.

We fixed it up when it was dry. We had to dig jolly deep to get