r boy Bill into
the cottage and shut the door.

We went home and chopped up the tombstone with the wood-axe and had a
blazing big bonfire, and cheered till we could hardly speak.

The post-card was a mistake; he was only missing. There was a pipe and a
whole pound of tobacco left over from our keepsake to the other
soldiers. We gave it to Bill. Father is going to have him for
under-gardener when his wounds get well. He'll always be a bit lame, so
he cannot fight any more.

I am very glad _some_ soldiers' mothers get their boys home again.

But if they have to die, it is a glorious death; and I hope mine will be
that.

And three cheers for the Queen, and the mothers who let their boys go,
and the mothers' sons who fight and die for old England. Hip, hip,
hurrah!

THE TOWER OF MYSTERY

It was very rough on Dora having her foot bad, but we took it in turns
to stay in with her, and she was very decent about it. Daisy was most
with her. I do not dislike Daisy, but I wish she had been taught how to
play. Because Dora is rather like that naturally, and sometimes I have
thought that Daisy makes her worse.

I talked to Albert's uncle about it one day when the others had gone to
church, and I did not go because of earache, and he said it came from
reading the wrong sort of books partly--she has read _Ministering
Children_, and _Anna Ross, or The Orphan of Waterloo_, and _Ready Work
for Willing Hands_, and _Elsie, or Like a Little Candle_, and even a
horrid little blue book about the something or other of Little Sins.
After this conversation Oswald took care she had plenty of the right
sort of books to read, and he was surprised and pleased when she got up
early one morning to finish _Monte Cristo_. Oswald felt that he was
really being useful to a suffering fellow-creature when he gave Daisy
books that were not all about being good.

A few days after Dora was laid up Alice called a council of the
Wouldbegoods, and Oswald and Dicky attended with darkly clouded brows.
Alice had the minute-book, which was an exercise-book that had not much
written in it. She had begun at the other end. I hate doing that myself,
because there is so little room at the top compared with right way up.

Dora and a sofa had been carried out on to the lawn, and we were on the
grass. It was very hot and dry. We had sherbet. Alice read:

"'Society of the Wouldbegoods.

"'We have not done much. Dicky mended a window, and we got the milk-