When they cried or told her stories, she could understand.

When she worked she might be doing things which might somehow reach Donal or boys like Donal.
Howsoever long her life was she knew one thing would never be blotted out by time--the day she went down to Mersham Wood to see Mrs.Bennett, whose three grandsons had been killed within a few days of each other.
She had received the news in one telegram.

There was no fairy wood any longer, there were only bare branched trees standing holding out naked arms to the greyness of the world.

They looked as if they were protesting against something.

The grass and ferns were brown and sodden with late rains and there were no hollyhocks and snapdragons in the cottage garden--only on either side of the brick path dead brown stalks, some of them broken by the wind.