The first big change came when Hugo went to school.
Guy had gone two years before, when he was ten years old. That
made a break in our lives, of course; we missed Guy badly, but
it seemed somehow in the order of things and natural. It had
always been settled for Guy to go away to school when he was
ten. He had accepted the idea, and Hugo and I accepted it for
him. He was ready to go, and there was nothing tragic in the
separation.
He went and came back, and went again and came back again. The
term time while he was away passed not interminably, and he slipped
back into our life each holiday time without a serious break.
With Hugo it was quite different. We had known that it was intended
for him to go some time, but vaguely. Cousin Delia had said so
at the time Guy went, and Guy spoke of it from time to time.
But it had not seemed real or imminent, and had not worried us.
Just as we grown-up people live always with the knowledge of
death in front of us, yet do not think of it much, until it comes
certainly near.
So two years went by after Guy’s going, and we had grown accustomed
to life with him only sometimes there, and were as happy as before,
and as free from care. Then, a month after Hugo’s tenth birthday,
Cousin Delia told him that he was going to school with Guy the
next autumn.
It was June. I found him lying in the hayfield, quite still,
on his face with the long flowering grasses and the buttercups
above his head.
I had known something was the matter, but I did not know what
it was. I was up in our house in the Happy Tree, and I knew suddenly
that something had happened bad, that Hugo was in trouble. I
came down from the tree and looked for him, and for a long time
I could not find him. I looked for him in the Walled Garden,
by the Frog Pond, in the Ruin; I knew he was not in the wood;
then I went down to the stream and walked along it; and then
I began to wonder if Hugo was dead. Then as I came back from
the stream I found him, lying like that, in the long grass.
I sat down beside him in the long grass and asked him what had
happened, and at first he did not answer.
Two white butterflies were chasing each other backwards and forwards
over his head. The buttercups nodded and swayed in the faint
wind, and the soft, feathery heads of the grass.
They touched against my cheek, too, as I sat there, squatting
on my knees. They were almost as tall as I was.