Did your heart beat, remembering what had been? 
    Did you still hear around you, as you lay,
  The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen,
    The thunder of the guns at close of day?

  All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed;
    Sunshine and rain fall with their calming breath;
  You need no pall, so young and newly dead,
    Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.

  When with the morrow’s dawn the bugle blew,
    For the first time it summoned you in vain;
  The Last Post does not sound for such as you;
    But God’s Reveille wakens you again.

* * * * *

SUGAR.

“Francesca,” I said, “you must be very deeply occupied; for ten minutes I have not heard your silvery voice.”

“I am attempting,” she said, “to fill up our sugar form.”

“Is it a tremendous struggle?”

“Yes,” she said, “it is a regular brain-smasher.”

“Give me the paper, and let me have a go at it.”

With a haggard face, but without a word, she handed me the buff form, and sat silently while I read the various explanations and directions.

“Francesca,” I said, “you are doing wrong.  It says that the form must be filled up and signed by a responsible member of the household.  Now you can say that you’re brilliant or amiable or handsome or powerful or domineering, but can you honestly say you’re responsible?  No, you can’t.  So I shall keep this form and fill it up myself in due time, and leave you to look after the hens or talk to the gardener.”

“Anybody,” she said, “who can wring a smile from a gardener, as I have this morning, is entitled to be considered responsible.  Infirm of purpose! hand me the paper.”

“Very well,” I said, “you can have the paper; only remember that, if we get fined a thousand pounds for transgressing the Defence of the Realm Act, you mustn’t ask me for the money.  You must pay it yourself.”

“I’ll chance that,” she said, as I handed back the paper.

“Now then, we shan’t be long.  Which of these two addresses shall we have?”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, they tell you to fill in the address in capital letters, and then they give you two to pick from.  One is 1000, Upper Grosvenor Street, W. 1—­”

“It is a longer street than I had supposed.”

“And the other,” she continued, “is 17, Church Lane, Middlewich, Cheshire.”

“Let it be Middlewich,” I said.  “Since boyhood’s hour I have dreamt of living in Middlewich.  As for the other, I simply couldn’t live in a street of a thousand houses.  Could you?”

“No,” she said, “I couldn’t.  We’ll be Middlewichians....  There, it’s done.  Capital letters and all.”

“Don’t slack off,” I said.  “Fill it all up now that you’ve got started.”

“I suppose I’d better begin with myself.”

“Yes,” I said, “you may have that privilege.  Put it down quick:  Carlyon, Francesca; age blank, because they don’t want ages over eighteen; F for female, and Married Woman for occupation.  Then treat me in the same way, putting M for F, and 2nd Lieutenant of Volunteers instead of Married Woman.”