“That made no odds to him. He joined up as Sergeant Instructor at the first go-off, an’ when the Battalion was ready he got ’imself sent along. He wangled me into ’is Platoon when I went out--early in ’Seventeen. Because Ma wanted it, I suppose.” “I’d no notion you knew him that well,” was Keede’s comment. “Oh, it made no odds to him. He ’ad no pets in the Platoon, but ’e’d write ’ome to Ma about me an’ all the doin’s. You see,” Strangwick stirred uneasily on the sofa, “we’d known him all our lives--lived in the next street an’ all.... An’ him well over fifty. Oh dear me! _Oh_ dear me! What a bloody mix-up things are, when one’s as young as me!” he wailed of a sudden. But Keede held him to the point. “He wrote to your Mother about you?” “Yes. Ma’s eyes had gone bad followin’ on air-raids. ’Blood-vessels broke behind ’em from sittin’ in cellars an’ bein’ sick. She had to ’ave ’er letters read to her by Auntie. Now I think of it, that was the only thing that you might have called anything at all----” “Was that the Aunt that died, and that you got the wire about?” Keede drove on. “Yes--Auntie Armine--Ma’s younger sister an’ she nearer fifty than forty. What a mix-up! An’ if I’d been asked any time about it, I’d ’ave sworn there wasn’t a single sol’tary item concernin’ her that everybody didn’t know an’ hadn’t known all along. No more conceal to her doin’s than--than so much shop-front. She’d looked after sister an’ me, when needful--hoopin’ cough an’ measles--just the same as Ma. We was in an’ out of her house like rabbits. You see, Uncle Armine is a cabinet-maker, an’ second-’and furniture, an’ we liked playin’ with the things. She ’ad no children, and when the War came, she said she was glad of it. But she never talked much of her feelin’s. She kept herself to herself, you understand.” He stared most earnestly at us to help out our understandings. “What was she like?” Keede inquired. “A biggish woman, an’ had been ’andsome, I believe, but, bein’ used to her, we two didn’t notice much--except, per’aps, for one thing. Ma called her ’er proper name, which was Bella; but Sis an’ me always called ’er Auntie Armine. See?” “What for?” “We thought it sounded more like her--like somethin’ movin’ slow, in armour.” “Oh! And she read your letters to your mother, did she?” “Every time the post came in she’d slip across the road from opposite an’ read ’em. An’--an’ I’ll go bail for it that that was all there was to it for as far back as _I_ remember. Was I to swing to-morrow, I’d go bail for _that!_ ’Tisn’t fair of ’em to ’ave unloaded it all on me, because--because--if the dead _do_ rise, why, what in ’ell becomes of me an’ all I’ve believed all me life? I want to know _that_! I--I----” But Keede would not be put off. “Did the Sergeant give you away at all in his letters?” he demanded, very quietly.