steadily. They adored their mother. Whatever she loved they loved
blindly. It was a pity she died. She died soon after the war began. They
had been so happy, so _dreadfully_ happy....

"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a shake, for
here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to think of one's
mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to a new life and
everything is all promise because it isn't anything else, and not if
one's mother happened to have been so--well, so fearfully sweet. "You
can't be Christopher, because, you see, I'm the eldest."

Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with it, but
she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and expressed a hope that
Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her Col for short. "I'm afraid
you will, though," she added, "and then I shall feel so like Onkel
Nicolas."

This was their German uncle, known during his life-time, which had
abruptly left off when the twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient
person, older by far even than their father, who had seemed so very old.
But Onkel Col had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of
the _liebe Gott_ in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He came to
a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them anything
except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a black band round
the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was more good-tempered
than ever, and their mother, when they questioned her, just said that
poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven, and that in future they would speak
of him as Onkel Nicolas, because it was more respectful.

"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the garden.

"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so often
explained to her sister, naturally knew more about everything, "because
the angels won't like him. Nobody _could_ like Onkel Col. Even if
they're angels. And though they're obliged to have him there because he
was such a very good man, they won't talk to him much or notice him much
when God isn't looking. And second of all, because you _are_ poor when
you get to heaven. Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their
things with them, and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He
couldn't even take his clothes with him."

"Then is he quite--did Onkel Col go there quite--"

Anna-Felicitas