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A SOLDIER’S CHILDREN.

Our home used to be in a hut in the dear old Camp, with lots of bands
and trumpets and bugles and Dead Marches, and three times
a day there was a gun,
But now we live in View Villa at the top of the village, and it isn’t
nearly such fun. 
We never see any soldiers, except one day we saw a Volunteer, and we
ran after him as hard as ever we could go, for we thought he
looked rather brave;
But there’s only been one funeral since we came, an ugly black thing
with no Dead March or Union Jack, and not even a firing party
at the grave. 
There is a man in uniform to bring the letters, but he’s nothing like
our old Orderly, Brown;
I told him, through the hedge, “Your facings are dirty, and you’d
have to wear your belt if my father was at home,” and oh,
how he did frown! 
But things can’t be expected to go right when Old Father’s away, and
he’s gone to the war;
Which is why we play at soldiers and fighting battles more than ever
we did before. 
And I try to keep things together:  every morning I have a parade of
myself and Dick,
To see that we are clean, and to drill him and do sword-exercise with
poor Grandpapa’s stick. 
Grandpapa’s dead, so he doesn’t want it now, and Dick’s too young for
a real tin sword like mine: 
He’s so young he won’t make up his mind whether he’ll go into the
Artillery or the Line. 
I want him to be a gunner, for his frock’s dark blue, and Captain
Powder gave us a wooden gun with an elastic that shoots
quite a big ball. 
It’s nonsense Dick’s saying he’d like to be a Chaplain, for that’s
not being a soldier at all. 
Besides, he always wants to be Drum-Major when we’ve funerals, to
stamp the stick and sing RUM—­TUM—­TUM—­
To the Dead March in Saul (that’s the name of the tune, and you play
it on a drum).

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Mary is so good, she might easily be a Chaplain, but of course she
can’t be anything that wants man;
She likes nursing her doll, but when we have battles she moves the
lead soldiers about, and does what she can. 
She never grumbles about not being able to grow up into a General,
though I should think it must be a great bore. 
I asked her what she would do if she were grown up into a woman,
and belonged to some one who was wounded in the war,—­
She said she’d go out and nurse him:  so I said, “But supposing you
couldn’t get him better, and he died; how would you behave?”
And she said if she couldn’t get a ship to bring him home in, she
should stay out there and grow a garden, and make wreaths
for his grave. 
Nurse says we oughtn’t to have battles, now Father’s gone to battle,
but that’s just the reason why! 
And I don’t believe one bit what she said about its making Mother cry. 
Only she does like us to put away our toys on