Until We Meet Again by Margaret Thornton Page B

peace had perished in the stalemate of the trenches.
    ‘It’s something I know I have to do,’ he said, ‘although I deplore the whole idea of war. It is evil and, to my mind, totally unnecessary. What on earth are we fighting about, anyway?’
    ‘Everyone I talk to is asking that very same thing,’ said Maddy quietly.
    Freddie shook his head sadly. ‘Obviously it’s because we must put an end to tyranny,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘We can’t let the bullies win, Maddy. That’s what Kaiser Wilhelm has become, and all his troops… Although I daresay a good number of them wonder what it’s all about. Queen Victoria would be turning in her grave if she knew what a monster her grandson has turned into. When her sons and daughters were married off to foreign royalty it was withthe intention of keeping the peace between the nations. And Edward the Seventh; he was known as the Peacemaker, wasn’t he?’
    ‘Yes, war is a dreadful thing,’ agreed Maddy. ‘But we want the world to be a safe place for Amy to grow up in, don’t we?’
    ‘That’s what it’s all about for me,’ said Freddie. He held her close for a moment in a fond embrace. ‘Try not to worry, darling… I’ll see you at teatime.’
    Freddie was duly signed up to join a battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment and after passing his medical examination he was sent for training, quite soon, to a camp near to the city of York.
    Several of the other men of the Moon family were to follow him into the army before long.
    ‘I’m missing him dreadfully,’ Maddy told her best friend and stepsister Jessie, when she called to see her and her little son, Gregory, one afternoon in late February. Freddie had been gone for two weeks. ‘I have to try and keep cheerful though, for Amy’s sake; and my father and Aunt Faith don’t want an old misery-guts living with them. In a way, I suppose it’s better that we’re living here with them, now that Freddie has gone, rather than Amy and me being on our own.’
    ‘They’re glad to have you,’ said Jessie. ‘It willbe quite a while, won’t it, before you are able to move back to Eastborough?’
    ‘I’m not even thinking about it,’ replied Maddy. ‘The place is boarded up and we just have to wait our turn. It’s a shame about the shop, though. I really do miss all that; serving in the shop and meeting people, and doing my dressmaking. Although I’m still running the dressmaking business from here. Aunt Faith said I could do the fittings here, and I’ve got my sewing machine; luckily it wasn’t damaged. And Aunt Faith has offered to sell the baby clothes that Emily knits in Moon’s Modes. I think that’s really kind of her.’
    ‘Yes, Mother is eager to do all she can to help,’ said Jessie. ‘I know she’s on tenterhooks, though, at the moment, in case Tommy should take it into his head to enlist. Your Freddie going has started the ball rolling. You know that Samuel has signed on, don’t you? And of course Mother is upset about that.’
    ‘Yes, so I’ve heard,’ said Maddy. ‘And Bertram as well. Tommy hasn’t actually said anything about joining up, has he? Although I know he and Dominic are still training like mad with their ATC. But they are both supposed to be going to university in September. I shouldn’t think the army – the powers that be, I mean – would want tointerfere with the young men’s university training, would they?’
    ‘Who knows?’ said Jessie. ‘I only know that if our Tommy gets a bee in his bonnet about something there’s no stopping him. And what Tommy says, Dominic will follow, and vice versa. Tilly’s friendship with Dominic is still going strong, isn’t it?’
    ‘So it seems,’ agreed Maddy. ‘Tilly is very quiet, as you know. She keeps herself to herself, but there is a glint in her eyes these days and a dreamy smile that makes me think she’s in love.’
    ‘For the first time,’ said Jessie. ‘She’s led quite a sheltered