Mrs. Teddy went about the village in a coloured dress bearing herself confidently. Teddy had been listed now as "missing, since reported killed," and she had had two letters from his comrades. They said Teddy had been left behind in the ruins of a farm with one or two other wounded, and that when the Canadians retook the place these wounded had all been found butchered. None had been found alive. Afterwards the Canadians had had to fall back. Mr. Direck had been at great pains to hunt up wounded men from Teddy's company, and also any likely Canadians both at the base hospital in France and in London, and to get what he could from them. He had made it a service to Cissie. Only one of his witnesses was quite clear about Teddy, but he, alas! was dreadfully clear. There had been only one lieutenant among the men left behind, he said, and obviously that must have been Teddy. "He had been prodded in half-a-dozen places. His head was nearly severed from his body." Direck came down and told the story to Cissie. "Shall I tell it to her?" he asked. Cissie thought. "Not yet," she said.... Letty's face changed in those pitiful weeks when she was denying death. She lost her pretty colour, she became white; her mouth grew hard and her eyes had a hard brightness. She never wept, she never gave a sign of sorrow, and she insisted upon talking about Teddy, in a dry offhand voice. Constantly she referred to his final return. "Teddy," she said, "will be surprised at this," or "Teddy will feel sold when he sees how I have altered that." "Presently we shall see his name in a list of prisoners," she said. "He is a wounded prisoner in Germany." She adopted that story. She had no justification for it, but she would hear no doubts upon it. She presently began to prepare parcels to send him. "They want almost everything," she told people. "They are treated abominably. He has not been able to write to me yet, but I do not think I ought to wait until he asks me." Cissie was afraid to interfere with this. After a time Letty grew impatient at the delay in getting any address and took her first parcel to the post office. "Unless you know what prison he is at," said the postmistress. "Pity!" said Letty. "I don't know that. Must it wait for that? I thought the Germans were so systematic that it didn't matter." The postmistress made tedious explanations that Letty did not seem to hear. She stared straight in front of her at nothing. Then in a pause in the conversation she picked up her parcel. "It's tiresome for him to have to wait," she said. "But it can't be long before I know." She took the parcel back to the cottage. "After all," she said, "it gives us time to get the better sort of throat lozenges for him--the sort the syndicate shop doesn't keep." She put the parcel conspicuously upon the dresser in the kitchen where it was most in the way, and set herself to make a jersey for Teddy against the coming of the cold weather.