“How gay you are,” said Derry.

“We are not gay in our hearts,” Teddy told him.

“Why not?”

“Mother’s crying—­we heard her, and then Nurse went down and left us, and we looked out of the window and you came.”

Derry’s heart seemed to stop beating.  “Crying?”

Even as he spoke, Margaret stood on the threshold.  There were no tears, but it was worse than tears.

He started towards her, but with a gesture she stopped him.

“I am so glad you are—­here,” she said.

“My dear—­what is it?”

She put her hand up to her head.  “Teddy, dearest,” she asked, “can you take care of Margaret-Mary until Cousin Derry comes back?  I want to talk to him.”

Teddy’s grave eyes surveyed her.  “You’ve been cryin’,” he said, “I told Cousin Derry—­”

“Yes.  I have had—­bad news.  But—­I am not going to cry—­any more.  And you’ll take care of sister?”

“I tell you, old chap,” said Derry resourcefully, “you and Margaret-Mary can open my parcel, and when I come back we’ll all play together.”

Outside with Margaret, with the door shut on the children, he put his arm about her.  “Is it Win—­is he—­hurt?”

“He is—­oh, Derry, Derry, he is dead!”

Even then she did not cry.  “The children mustn’t know.  Not till I get a grip on myself.  They mustn’t think of it as—­sad.  They must think of it as—­glorious—­that he went—­that way—.”

Held close in his arms, she shook with sobs, silent, hard.  He carried her down to her room.  The maids were gathered there—­Nurse utterly useless in her grief.  It came to Derry, as he bent over Margaret, that he had always thought of Nurse as a heartless automaton, playing Chorus to Teddy, yet here she was, a weeping woman with the rest of them.

He sent all of the servants away, except Nurse, and then Margaret told him, “He was in one of the French towns which the Germans had vacated, and he happened to pick up a toy—­that some little child might have dropped—–­and there was an explosive hidden in it—­and that child’s toy killed him, Derry, killed him—­”

“My God, Margaret—­”

“They had put it there that it might kill a—­child!”

“Derry, the children mustn’t know how it happened.  They mustn’t think of him as—­hurt.  They know that something is the matter.  Can you tell them, Derry?  So that they will think of him as fine and splendid, and going up to Heaven because God loves brave men—?”

It was a hard task that she had set him, and when at last he left her, he went slowly up the stairs.

The children had strung the Midnight Camels across the room, the purple, patient creatures that Jean had made.

“The round rug is an oasis,” Teddy explained, “and the jonquil is a palm—­and we are going to save the dates and figs from our lunch.”

“I want my lunch,” Margaret-Mary complained.