"
Outside with Margaret, with the door shut on the children, he put his
arm about her. "Is it Win--is he--hurt?"
"He is--oh, Derry, Derry, he is dead!"
Even then she did not cry. "The children mustn't know. Not till I get
a grip on myself. They mustn't think of it as--sad. They must think
of it as--glorious--that he went--that way--."
Held close in his arms, she shook with sobs, silent, hard. He carried
her down to her room. The maids were gathered there--Nurse utterly
useless in her grief. It came to Derry, as he bent over Margaret, that
he had always thought of Nurse as a heartless automaton, playing Chorus
to Teddy, yet here she was, a weeping woman with the rest of them.
He sent all of the servants away, except Nurse, and then Margaret told
him, "He was in one of the French towns which the Germans had vacated,
and he happened to pick up a toy--that some little child might have
dropped---and there was an explosive hidden in it--and that child's toy
killed him, Derry, killed him--"
"My God, Margaret--"
"They had put it there that it might kill a--child!"
"Derry, the children mustn't know how it happened.
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