e not to be thus repulsed with impunity. We made complete but
cautious inquiries, and found out that the reason she cried when she saw
soldiers was that she had only one son, a boy. He was twenty-two, and he
had gone to the War last April. So that she thought of him when she saw
the soldiers, and that was why she cried. Because when your son is at
the wars you always think he is being killed. I don't know why. A great
many of them are not. If I had a son at the wars I should never think
he was dead till I heard he was, and perhaps not then, considering
everything. After we had found this out we held a council.

Dora said, 'We must do something for the soldier's widowed mother.'

We all agreed, but added 'What?'

Alice said, 'The gift of money might be deemed an insult by that proud,
patriotic spirit. Besides, we haven't more than eighteenpence among us.'

We had put what we had to father's L12 to buy the baccy and pipes.

The Mouse then said, 'Couldn't we make her a flannel petticoat and leave
it without a word upon her doorstep?'

But everyone said, 'Flannel petticoats in this weather?' so that was no
go.

Noel said he would write her a poem, but Oswald had a deep, inward
feeling that Mrs Simpkins would not understand poetry. Many people do
not.

H. O. said, 'Why not sing "Rule Britannia" under her window after she
had gone to bed, like waits,' but no one else thought so.

Denny thought we might get up a subscription for her among the wealthy
and affluent, but we said again that we knew money would be no balm to
the haughty mother of a brave British soldier.

'What we want,' Alice said, 'is something that will be a good deal of
trouble to us and some good to her.'

'A little help is worth a deal of poetry,' said Denny.

I should not have said that myself. Noel did look sick.

'What DOES she do that we can help in?' Dora asked. 'Besides, she won't
let us help.'

H. O. said, 'She does nothing but work in the garden. At least if she
does anything inside you can't see it, because she keeps the door shut.'

Then at once we saw. And we agreed to get up the very next day, ere
yet the rosy dawn had flushed the east, and have a go at Mrs Simpkins's
garden.

We got up. We really did. But too often when you mean to, overnight,
it seems so silly to do it when you come to waking in the dewy morn. We
crept downstairs with our boots in our hands. Denny is rather unlucky,
though a most careful boy. It was he who dro