In Chris’s mind God and Father Christmas were inextricably mixed up. He had no fear of either one or the other. Both were beneficent and considerate and ready to give people their choice both as to presents or other things.
Yet when he was put to bed that night he couldn’t dream of pleasant, soothing things, but was pursued by eight strong daughters in embroidered ninon frocks and pink sashes, who formed themselves into a solid phalanx and drove him to the edge of an awful precipice, and were just pushing him over ... when he would wake to find Miss Radley standing beside his bed, looking anxious and troubled, shading a candle with her hand.
The war had not touched Easter very nearly. Her mother had forbidden nurse to talk about it to her; and her father (judging her sensitiveness wholly from her gentle, Early-Victorian appearance) was careful to keep all frightening or depressing news from her as far as was possible. All her life she had been sheltered and adored and spared and spoiled. Her brothers, being so much older, had “given in” to her from the very first, and although the two eldest were fighting--one in the navy, the other in the army--their doings did not seem to affect her particularly. And of the three still at school she had, of late, seen very little, for in the holidays they were always doing O.T.C. training, or making munitions somewhere.
Yet one thing had impressed her during the last two years. She was always hearing that some of their acquaintances had “lost” a son, a brother, or a husband. They did not talk of “killed” or “missing” to Easter; but they did speak of this continual and mysterious “loss,” and with the queer secretive puzzledom of childhood she never asked people outright what they meant by the phrase.
It worried her, this continual losing. She never heard that these lost ones got found again. Suppose she herself got lost in this irretrievable way? How dreadful it would be. What would her family do? In justice to Easter one must allow that the thought of her people’s consternation quite overshadowed any possibly unpleasant consequences to herself.
She had never discussed the question with Chris, who knew a lot about the war and wanted to talk about it to the exclusion of more interesting topics--such as daughters. But this was easily overruled. Moreover, Easter’s mother had decided that far too much was said about the war in Chris’s hearing, and she had asked Miss Radley to warn him not to talk about it to Easter lest it should upset her.