The Strachans are in the War Zone, their house has been hit,
  They’ve caught a bad spy and they’re all done their bit.

“She’s a most onaccountable child, Miss Alison,” said Nannie to cook
next day; “she was actually sorry that the stone didn’t go right
through the roof, an’ you’d have thought she’d have gone on ever so ...
anyway, it kept them from caring much about the raid.”

CONCERNING CHRIS AND EASTER (1916)

Easter is the only girl, a sort of happy afterthought at the end of
a long family of five boys, with six years between her and her next
brother.

Chris is the only precious child, born after a good many years of
marriage to devoted and adoring parents.

Easter doesn’t think much of boys. They are common as blackberries in
her family and she is keenly sensible of her own distinction in having,
as she puts it, “chosen to come as a girl.”

Thus it came about that her mental attitude struck Chris with something
of a shock; not wholly unpleasant; stimulating; the tingle of
resentment tempered by a thrill of amused surprise. It was so odd and
new to meet anyone who felt like that.

Besides, till he came to live in Easter’s village he had been rather
lonely, and she supplied a felt want. Especially had this been so
in the last two bewildering years, for his parents had seemed less
absorbed in him than was quite dutiful. And for the last year his
father had vanished altogether to that mysterious place that swallowed
up so many pleasant and familiar folk; that overshadowing, omnipotent,
vastly extending region known as “the front.”

Easter, on her part, welcomed the society of Chris. She, too, was
lonely by reason of the very same cause as Chris. Little girls were
scarce in that village and Easter’s mother was busy all day long with
war work of one sort and another, and owing to the same cause Chris’s
governess, Miss Radley, only gave him her society during the bare hours
of lessons, which lessons had for some time been shared by Easter.

Now Easter was much better at lessons than Chris; much quicker, in
most things far more intelligent and receptive. Only in arithmetic did
Chris shine, and in this subject he had soared away from Easter and did
abstruse calculations in the end of the book all by himself with Miss
Radley.

Easter was born on an Easter Day, and this year she was eight years
old. Chris was born on Christmas Day, and last Christmas he was eight.
Therefore, in spite of his prowess in arithmetic, he maintains that he
is a year older than Easter.

“Weren’t you born in 1908?” he demands sternly.

“Ye-es,” answers Easter, “on an Easter Sunday. They _were_ so pleased.”

“And I,” says Chris, “was born in 1907. Take seven from eight and what
remains?”

“One, but it isn’t a real, whole one,” Easter objects.

No one knows this better than Chris, but he stoutly maintains: “A
year’s a year, and you’re either born in it or you’re not--so there.”

However, in spite of this and many other differences of opinion, they
had decided to get married when they came to what Easter’s nurse calls
“a suitable age.”

As a rule Chris follows blindly where Easter leads, giving in to her
stronger will and considerably stronger body, though not always without
protest.

Easter is tall for her age and very muscular. She has a gentle,
early-Victorian, regularly featured, delicately tinted face, with a
high forehead, abundant curly, fair hair, and large pathetic blue
eyes that are entirely misleading. In fact, her appearance is as
unlike her real character as it is possible for such an extremely
agreeable exterior to be. She looks all softness and gravity and gentle
melancholy. Whereas she is a ruthless and determined young person
who cares nothing for “moral suasion” and less for punishments and
penalties, provided she gets her own way.

Chris, on the contrary, is soft-hearted and easily ruled through his
affections. He would rather not be disobedient and troublesome unless
such breakings of the law are expressly commanded by Easter.

But to be called a “muff” is more than he can bear, and rather than
Easter should think this of him he will offend his whole dynasty of
friends.

Chris and Easter were sitting under a hedge brilliant with scarlet hips
and cloudy with “traveler’s joy.” The hedge topped a fairly steep
bank, with a ditch full of muddy water at the bottom of the bank.

A heated argument was in progress as to the names of their eight
daughters. Easter had already chosen the names, and they ran as
follows: Irene, Semolina, Rosalind, Majorca, Minorca, Vinolia, Larola,
and Salonica. Chris objected to Semolina and Vinolia.

“I hate semolina,” he observed gloomily, “almost as bad as I hate rice.”

“But it sounds so much nicer.”

“And Vinolia, too--greasy stuff you smear on chapped legs.”

“It’s got a lovely smell,” said Easter.

“And why,” demanded Chris, who was in a bold and captious mood, “should
there be eight of ’em? Why can’t there be some boys?”

“I won’t have boys, I tell you,” Easter declared firmly. “Girls are far
prettier.”

“_Are_ they?” asked Chris incredulously. “I’ve never seen any pretty
ones.”

Instead of asking “Where are your eyes?” Easter said huffily, in
life-like imitation of nurse: “That’s as it may be. Anyway they wear
far prettier clothes.”

“You don’t,” Chris pointed out.

Easter looked down at her extremely short and faded navy-blue skirt,
at her long legs stuck out in front of her, at her muddy boots, at the
large hole in the knee of her stocking. Save for the said skirt she
was dressed almost exactly like Chris, in muffin cap, reefer and brass
buttons.

“Sometimes I do,” she maintained; “but anyway, Irene, Semolina, and
Rosalind, and Majorca, and Minorca, and Vinolia, and Larola, and
Salonica will all have lovely frocks, silk ninon, with sashes. Chris,
they’ll be perfectly sweet, and we’ll make them walk two and two in
front of us to church.”

“I tell you,” Chris declared, unmoved by this entrancing vision, “that
I don’t _want_ so many daughters. I don’t like them, I don’t want ’em
and I won’t have ’em.”

“Then,” Easter ejaculated in breathless tones that should have warned
him, “I shan’t marry you.”

“I don’t care,” the callous Chris announced. “The country wants men. I
heard my daddy say so the last time he was home. There’s far too many
women as it is. They can’t fight.”

“Can’t they?” the indignant Easter exclaimed ironically, and giving
Chris a vigorous and wholly unexpected push, rolled him down the steep
bank and into the ditch with a mighty splash; and then, adding insult
to injury, she dug her heels into the wet grass, and taking off with
skill and surety, jumped over his prostrate body on to the road,
whereupon she ran away, laughing derisively.

Chris got most uncommonly wet, for the bottom of the ditch was slimy
and soft. Even after he had struggled to his feet they slipped about
and sank in far over the tops of his boots. And when he did manage to
scramble up the bank to the road, he certainly looked a deplorable
object, covered with mud and green slime and with water oozing from
every bit of him. He stamped his feet and rubbed them on the wet grass
that bordered the road without much visible betterment.

There was no going back through the village in such a plight, so
he climbed the first five-barred gate he saw and started on a long
cross-country journey that was to bring him home by unfrequented ways.
He found the unfrequented ways, for he didn’t meet a soul, but he lost
his bearings altogether. The wind got up and there followed cold, gusty
showers of rain and hail. He felt chilled and miserable and dreadfully
tired. Field after field he traversed and yet found no familiar
landmarks, till, having toiled uphill over a heavy ploughed field, he
reached a road that stood fairly high, and below him on the far horizon
he recognized the square tower of his own church. He plodded on and on
till at last he trotted wearily up his own drive, and there he saw that
not only Miss Radley but the three maids were all gathered on the steps
of the front door. The moment Miss Radley saw him she ran toward him,
exclaiming:

“Oh, Chris! Where _have_ you been? We were getting so anxious. Do you
know it’s half-past five? My dear boy, how wet you are! Come in and get
changed at once.”

The maids went back into the house when they saw Chris, and Miss Radley
hurried him in and upstairs, not even waiting to make him wipe his feet.

“We’ve been so anxious,” she repeated. “I went to Easter’s, and she
said you’d parted ever so long ago. Why did you go off by yourself like
that?”

Chris was half in, half out of his sailor blouse by this time, and
mumbled something about having got tired of Easter.

Miss Radley didn’t worry him much with questions, nor did she comment
severely upon his dirty state. She was extraordinarily kind and got her
hands all over mud in helping him to take off his boots; and it was
not until he was lying luxuriously in a hot bath that it struck him
as odd that his mother didn’t come to him. All the time, too, he had
the feeling that Miss Radley wanted to tell him something and yet she
couldn’t seem to begin.

“Where’s mummy?” he asked at last. “Isn’t she back yet? I wish she’d
come and talk to me.”

Miss Radley looked queerly at him, almost as though she were going to
cry. “Chris dear,” she said, and waited for quite a long time, “mummy
has had to go away....”

“Away! For the night? Where to? Why?”

“Chris dear”--again Miss Radley seemed to find it difficult to go
on--“she had a telegram, just after you went out, from the War Office,
asking her to go at once. Your father is in a hospital at Boulogne,
very ill ... wounded.”

“Dangerously wounded?” asked Chris, who was familiar with war terms.

Miss Radley nodded, and two tears ran down her cheeks. “That’s what it
said.”

“I think,” said Chris, “I’d like to get out of this bath now.”

When he was dressed he didn’t seem to want the long-delayed tea, even
though there was a beautiful brown egg and lovely buttered toast. In
spite of the hot bath and a bright fire in the schoolroom he felt
horrid, cold trickles running down his back all the time. He was
extremely tired, too, yet only conscious of one overwhelming want--to
be taken on his mother’s knee and comforted. Miss Radley took him on
hers and sat with him right in front of the fire. She was very kind and
told him how sorry mummy had been to go off in such a hurry without
saying good-bye, but there was just one train that would reach London
that night if she caught it at the junction; and the squire, Easter’s
father, had driven her himself in his motor, and they just managed; and
she was crossing to France that night in charge of a brother officer of
dad’s--she had her passport long ago.

Every now and then Miss Radley lightly touched his face, which was
very hot, and then she would hold his hand, which was very cold.
Half-asleep, Chris would murmur from time to time, “dangerously
wounded,” but somehow he couldn’t feel about it as he knew he ought to
feel. Though he adored his daddy, all he felt was this overpowering
ache of longing for his mother.

Easter’s scornful refusal to have any boys in her family had hurt him
very much. He felt lonely and pushed out, somehow; and he badly wanted
the one person who never failed in her appreciation of little boys,
even if they were thin and small and not particularly good looking, and
could not run so fast as ... certain little girls. He was conscious of
being all these undesirable things, and yet he was convinced it was a
great and glorious thing to be a boy, even if Easter didn’t think so.
Once, after a long and acrimonious discussion with her on this very
subject, he had said to his mother: “I choosed to come as a boy, didn’t
I?”

“God chose,” said his mother gravely.

“Me and God settled it together,” Chris announced complacently, and his
mother got up suddenly and looked in a cupboard for something she never
found.

In Chris’s mind God and Father Christmas were inextricably mixed up.
He had no fear of either one or the other. Both were beneficent and
considerate and ready to give people their choice both as to presents
or other things.

Yet when he was put to bed that night he couldn’t dream of pleasant,
soothing things, but was pursued by eight strong daughters in
embroidered ninon frocks and pink sashes, who formed themselves into
a solid phalanx and drove him to the edge of an awful precipice, and
were just pushing him over ... when he would wake to find Miss Radley
standing beside his bed, looking anxious and troubled, shading a candle
with her hand.

The war had not touched Easter very nearly. Her mother had forbidden
nurse to talk about it to her; and her father (judging her
sensitiveness wholly from her gentle, Early-Victorian appearance) was
careful to keep all frightening or depressing news from her as far
as was possible. All her life she had been sheltered and adored and
spared and spoiled. Her brothers, being so much older, had “given
in” to her from the very first, and although the two eldest were
fighting--one in the navy, the other in the army--their doings did not
seem to affect her particularly. And of the three still at school she
had, of late, seen very little, for in the holidays they were always
doing O.T.C. training, or making munitions somewhere.

Yet one thing had impressed her during the last two years. She was
always hearing that some of their acquaintances had “lost” a son, a
brother, or a husband. They did not talk of “killed” or “missing” to
Easter; but they did speak of this continual and mysterious “loss,” and
with the queer secretive puzzledom of childhood she never asked people
outright what they meant by the phrase.

It worried her, this continual losing. She never heard that these
lost ones got found again. Suppose she herself got lost in this
irretrievable way? How dreadful it would be. What would her family do?
In justice to Easter one must allow that the thought of her people’s
consternation quite overshadowed any possibly unpleasant consequences
to herself.

She had never discussed the question with Chris, who knew a lot
about the war and wanted to talk about it to the exclusion of more
interesting topics--such as daughters. But this was easily overruled.
Moreover, Easter’s mother had decided that far too much was said about
the war in Chris’s hearing, and she had asked Miss Radley to warn him
not to talk about it to Easter lest it should upset her.

Miss Radley had her own opinion of Easter’s sensibility. She had not
taught the children for six months without discovering which was the
more susceptible and imaginative. But she did as she was bid, and Chris
had done his best to obey in his turn. Perhaps in a lofty masculine way
he was rather proud that he should be allowed to know things closely
hidden from the domineering Easter, and was therefore the less anxious
to share his knowledge with her.

He whole-heartedly admired Easter. She was so strong, so good at
things, so invariably cheerful and well, with a never-failing fund of
good spirits and energy. It is very possible that one of her chief
attractions for him lay in the fact that she seemed so entirely outside
those great and grave anxieties that obsessed everybody else.

Easter was brought up to understand that any “career” that she
chose was open to her. She should have an equal chance with any of
her brothers; she might be a doctor for a factory inspector, or a
police-woman, or go in for any art or craft she fancied. Literature,
art, music, even the stage, were to be open to her, should she so
wish. But, so far, her sole ambition was centred in the possession of
a husband, a meek husband, and eight meek daughters to move and have
their being at her decree.

It was the swing of the pendulum with a vengeance.

No one told Easter about Chris’s daddy that afternoon. In the evening
she prepared her lessons with her customary energy and intelligence,
and giggled cheerfully from time to time at the recollection of Chris’s
comical appearance as he lay floundering in the ditch.

“That’ll teach him,” said Easter to herself, “whether it’s to be
daughters or not!”

Next morning at breakfast her mother said: “Miss Radley can’t take you
to-day, Easter dear, so it’s no use your going over. They had very bad
news yesterday, and Mrs. Denver has had to go to France. The major is
very ill.”

“Has Chris gone?” Easter asked.

“No, dear; but Miss Radley sent over a note quite early to say he has
got a bad, feverish cold (he got so wet yesterday--it’s a pity he
didn’t come back with you), and we don’t know what it may turn to. So
you must just take a holiday, for I’m due at the hospital supplies at
ten, and shall be away all day.”

“What’s the matter with Major Denver?”

“I fear,” said her mother, anxiously watching the earnest, delicately
tinted face upturned to hers, “I fear he is very badly wounded.”

“Oh!” said Easter, and she looked very grave.

“Be as happy as you can, my precious,” her mother called to her as she
drove away. “I’ll get home as early as possible.”

That was a very long day for Easter.

For one thing, it rained all the morning; for another, her father had
to go a long way off on business connected with special constables, and
couldn’t take her; and Amelia, the usually cheerful housemaid, went
about the house with red eyes and a perpetual sniff, because she had
heard that morning she’d lost a cousin in the “big push on the Somme.”

Amelia was distinctly depressing.

Easter knitted a few rows of her scarf--the scarf that was always begun
by her and finished by somebody else because she got tired of it.
She found she was missing Chris far more poignantly than was at all
pleasant.

After all, even if he didn’t always quite give in to her, he was good
company; and Easter found herself remembering many kind things he had
done. The chocolates he had always shared so generously, the apples so
unequally divided always in her favor. Once when she fell off a wall
and scratched her hands and tore her frock so badly, he hadn’t laughed,
and he was so seldom rough in play, only when unbearably provoked.
Easter was too honest not to admit that even at the time.

It cleared up in the afternoon and she ran over to the Denvers’ house
to see if Chris was up yet and could play.

Emma, the parlormaid, was firm in her refusal to admit Easter.

“Master Chris is that bad, so feverish it might turn to anything, the
doctor says. Miss Radley said no one was to come in, and she haven’t
left Master Chris a single minute herself. It’s dreadful, and us all in
such trouble about the major, too.”

“You haven’t lost him, have you?” Easter asked.

“Good gracious! no, not yet, so far as we knows. But he’s as bad as
bad, and,” she added, “if anything was to happen to Master Chris and
his ma away an’ all--but, there! I can’t bear to think of it. You run
along home, Miss Easter. I’ll tell Miss Radley you came to ask.”

And the door was shut in Easter’s face.

Next day the news was no better. Even Easter’s mother could not keep
from her the universal anxiety as to Major Denver. He had been their
doctor for a year before the war, and in that time had managed to
endear himself to everybody.

It was said he had taken a country practice because he thought the
bracing air would be good for Chris. Every soul in the village felt a
special right to know the latest news of the major, and Miss Radley had
the telegrams pinned on the front door as soon as she got them.

All day long people came up the drive to read these telegrams, and
presently there was a bit of white paper as well, concerning Chris, for
the doctor’s little son lay grievously sick at home, while his father,
they feared, was dying of his wounds in France. A white-capped hospital
nurse had come to help Miss Radley.

Easter was a very lonely little girl. She felt, too, that in some
inexplicable fashion she was shut out from things, that more was
happening than she was allowed to know; and, worst of all, Chris had so
entirely disappeared that she began to fear that he, too, was lost, and
they were afraid to tell her.

At the end of nearly a week she felt she could not bear this
furtiveness and suspense a minute longer, and she determined to go to
Chris’s house and find out for herself just what had happened and was
happening. She would not ring the bell. She would go round to the side
of the house and see if the schoolroom window was open, and get in and
find Miss Radley and force her to tell the truth. If Chris was lost,
then she, Easter, must herself set forth to find him without more delay.

All fell out as she had planned.

The schoolroom window, which opened like a door divided down the
middle, was open, and Miss Radley, with her back to it, sat at the
table, writing.

Easter could move quietly as a cat when it suited her. She came in
without making a sound, and stood just behind Miss Radley, who was so
absorbed she noticed nothing.

“Have you lost Chris, Miss Radley?” Easter asked loudly.

Miss Radley started violently, and Easter came round to her side, and
she noticed that Miss Radley’s usually round, rosy face was pale and
much less round than it used to be.

“Oh, Easter dear, how you startled me! Don’t suggest such a dreadful
thing! We’re awfully anxious, with his mother away and all this other
trouble, but ... we must hope always, always hope--for if anything
happened to Chris....”

“What _has_ happened to Chris?” Easter asked, searching the very soul
of Miss Radley with her large clear gaze.

“He got so wet after he left you that day last week--I can’t think
how--and he got a real bad chill, and now there are all sorts of
complications--and his temperature keeps up so.”

“What are complications?” Easter interrupted.

“You wouldn’t understand.... Oh, Easter, child, don’t stare at me like
that! Aren’t you sorry?”

“I know how Chris got so wet,” Easter said slowly. “I pushed him into
the ditch.”

Miss Radley drew back a little from Easter; then she put out her hand
and laid it on the child’s arm.

“I expect it was only in fun ... you couldn’t know....”

“Can’t I play with him a bit? Is it catching?” Easter’s voice was still
quite loud and matter-of-fact. “It’s rather dull and lonely for me.”

“For _you_!” Miss Radley echoed indignantly. “Don’t you understand?
Don’t you care, you hard child? But you never did care for anybody but
yourself.”

“Does Chris?”

“Yes, indeed he does. He’s always been a dear, kind boy. Easter, you
must go home. I can’t stop to talk to you now. Try to think about other
people a little....”

Miss Radley did not finish her sentence, for Easter had gone from her
as silently as she had come. For a minute the governess sat quite
still. Then she sighed and shivered, and went on with her letter.

Easter fled down the Denvers’ drive and out into the road, but she
didn’t go home. She ran and ran till she could run no more, and
dropping into a walk, turned downhill along a winding lane thickly
bordered by trees so high that they almost met overhead, forming an
arch. The light in this avenue was curiously lurid, for the trees were
beeches, and though rapidly thinning, were still gorgeous in reds and
yellows. The avenue led to a church in the next parish (Easter had run
such a long way), and she had been there quite lately with Chris to
a fruit and flower service in aid of the local hospital. Miss Radley
had taken them both, and now Easter remembered there were very large
vegetable marrows at the base of one of the pillars, and wondered if
they were still there. She and Chris had sat next each other at that
service, and during the sermon he had let her hold his knife. It had a
corkscrew and a thing for taking stones out of horses’ hoofs, as well
as blades, and all were very difficult to open. Chris was good about
lending his things. And he never told of people. What did old Raddles
mean when she called her hard? She did care for Chris, but she wasn’t
going to say so to Raddles. Yet Raddles looked awfully sad. Supposing
they _had_ lost Chris, after all, and were afraid to say? Supposing
she, Easter, got lost, now, to-day? This was a long, lonely, unfamiliar
road, with such a queer light in it. Supposing it were enchanted and
she couldn’t find her way back? Then she would be like all those sons
she had heard about lately. Her heart began to beat very fast. Ah!
somebody was coming up the road. She would ask her way. It would be
dreadful to be lost.

A very tall lady came toward her walking slowly up the hill. She was
dressed in black, with a long thin veil turned back from her face.
She looked restlessly from side to side, as though trying to find
somebody in the shadows. This seemed quite natural to Easter. Timidity
or shyness with strangers was unknown to her. She was glad to see
somebody, and the tall lady’s face was very gentle.

“Have _you_ lost anybody?” Easter asked as they met.

The tall lady stopped, and though she looked straight down at Easter,
the child was uncomfortably conscious that she didn’t really see her.

“I have lost my only son,” said the lady.

“You, too!” cried Easter, and what she could not say to Miss Radley
she found it easy to say now to this pale lady who looked at her so
strangely. “Oh, I _am_ sorry!”

And she took one of the lady’s hands in both her own.

The lady did not draw her hand away; with her eyes still fixed on
Easter’s face with that queer, unseeing look, she said: “Dear child!
And you?”

“Not yet,” said Easter. “Not yet--at least, they say so, but I’m
dreadfully afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said the lady. “Don’t be afraid. That’s what he
always said.”

“Everyone,” said Easter, and her hard little voice grew soft, “everyone
seems losing sons and people. Won’t you never, never find him again?”

Into that lady’s face there leapt a sudden radiance as when a clearly
burning lamp is carried into a dark room. Her eyes were luminous and
bright, and Easter felt that she was really seeing her at last.

“We shall all find them again,” she said almost joyously. “Everyone of
us.”

“Are you sure?” Easter questioned.

“In sure and certain hope,” said the lady.

“In sure and certain hope,” Easter repeated. “I like that. You _are_
sure?”

“Absolutely. Tell me, dear, who is it you are anxious about?”

Hand in hand they had started slowly to mount the hill.

“It’s Chris,” she said. “He plays with me a lot and we do lessons
together ... and they won’t let me see him, and I want to tell him I’m
sorry.”

“But why won’t they let you see him?”

“Because they’re afraid they’ll lose him--I heard _that_, though
Raddles denied it when I asked her.”

“Then he’s ill?”

“I suppose so.”

The lady looked curiously at Easter. There was no doubt whatever that
she was troubled, and yet ... how oddly the child spoke.

As they walked on, hand in hand, the lady said, more to herself than to
Easter: “Does the road wind uphill all the way?”

“No,” said Easter; “when we get to the end of this it’s quite flat.”

When they came to the main road Easter took her hand out of the lady’s.
“I know my way now,” she said. “Good-bye.”

The lady stooped and kissed her. “I should write to Chris if I were
you,” she said. “He’ll probably like a letter very much when he’s a
little better.”

Easter nodded and started to run, with that swift, long-distance,
steady running that had so often worn out Chris; that was his
admiration and his despair. And as she ran she repeated over and over
again: “In sure and certain hope” all the way.

She would write to Chris directly she got in. Her copies were always
neater than his.

But she couldn’t do it the minute she got in, for tea was ready, and
her mother there to have it with her. Her mother looked pleased, too.
Better news had come from France. There was hope that Major Denver
might pull through, after all; and she had seen Miss Radley, and
Chris’s temperature was nearly down to normal.

It was a lovely tea; and directly after it Easter sat down at
her mother’s desk and wrote to Chris. Very large, with beautiful
up-and-down strokes:

  “DEAR CHRIS,

  “I’m sory I pushed you. Sum of them shall be boys. The ones with the
  names you don’t like. Please don’t get lost.

                                                “Your loving
                                                               “EASTER.”

She licked the flap of the envelope with copious completeness, and in
one corner of the address, very thick and black, in inch-long printed
letters was the word “EARGUNT.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.