"If I’m asked for!" Mummy repeated the words scornfully. "Of course I’d go." Robin looked up from his temple. "Go where?" he asked. "Can I come, too?" "Don’t you worry, sonny dear," mummy said, and her voice sounded flat and tired. "I don’t for one moment suppose they’ll want me. I only wish they would. ’That’s all shove be’ind me—long ago and far away,’" she quoted, while Major Booth shook his head in violent dissent. They talked of other things that did not particularly interest Robin till he went away, but as Major Booth ran down the verandah steps he had called out: "Mind, it’s a bandabost! You come if you’re asked for." Robin remembered that very distinctly. When they had been four weeks at the Vicarage, when they were just settling down to the quiet life there, the summons came. It seems that Robin’s mummy, before there was any Robin or Jean or even daddy, had been a particularly first-class surgical nurse, and not only that, but an Army nurse. She never talked about it, but Major Booth had discovered it soon after she came to India with daddy. They were out in camp, and there was a bad accident to one of the soldiers, and mummy just took charge and helped Major Booth as only a skilful nurse can help. After that, if sudden illness or accidents occurred where no trained nurses were handy, people rather got into the way of sending for mummy to lend a hand. And now they had sent for her to nurse wounded soldiers at a base hospital. She explained this to Robin the night before she left, as he sat on her knee all ready for bed in front of the nursery fire. He remembered the feel of the nursery fender, the warm wire bars, as he pressed his feet against them. Mummy did not deny that she was immensely proud and glad to go—it was such an honour to be allowed to do anything—but she hated leaving Robin and Jean. Still, in war we must all give up something. He had to give up his daddy and his mummy—"a good deal for a little boy," she added. Would he be good and try to please Aunt Monica and the new nurse, and encourage Jean to be good, and not fret, and try to help all he could? Just then Robin felt so solemn and exalted that it seemed he could give up anything to help the poor wounded soldiers, and so he said. And after his prayers, mummy tucked him into bed and kissed him, and whispered the things mummies do whisper at such times. Her eyes tasted salt when he kissed them, dragging her head down with his two arms that he might do it—mummy was so tall—and the next day she went away. She had been gone five whole weeks, and Christmas was not far off, and that Friday afternoon Robin wanted her most desperately, for somehow everything had gone wrong. It began with digging trenches. Now to dig a trench properly, as in war, you must lie on your tummy and throw the earth up in front of you; if you stood up, the enemy would pot you—that’s an understood thing.