'It's not! it's NOT! Dear, DEAR Mrs Simpkins, do come with me and
see! You don't know how sorry we are about Bill. Do come and see.

We can go through the churchyard, and the others have all gone in,
so as to leave it quiet for you. Do come.'

And Mrs Simpkins did. And when she read what we had put up, and
Alice told her the verse we had not had room for, she leant against
the wall by the grave-- I mean the tombstone--and Alice hugged her,
and they both cried bitterly. The poor soldier's mother was very,
very pleased, and she forgave us about the turnips, and we were
friends after that, but she always liked Alice the best. A great
many people do, somehow.

After that we used to put fresh flowers every day on Bill's
tombstone, and I do believe his mother was pleased, though she got
us to move it away from the churchyard edge and put it in a corner
of our garden under a laburnum, where people could not see it from
the church. But you could from the road, though I think she
thought you couldn't. She came every day to look at the new
wreaths. When the white flowers gave out we put coloured, and she
liked it just as well.

About a fortnight after the erecting of the tombstone the girls
were putting fresh wreaths on it when a soldier in a red coat came
down the road, and he stopped and looked at us. He walked with a
stick, and he had a bundle in a blue cotton handkerchief, and one
arm in a sling.