“Not even if it’s comin’?” Binnie said and pointed down the tracks. The train was indeed bearing down on them, its massive engine wreathed in steam.

Thank goodness. “Here’s your train, Theodore,” Eileen said, kneeling to button his coat. She hung his gas-mask box around his neck. “Your name and address and destination are on this paper.” She tucked it in his pocket. “When you get to Euston, don’t leave the platform. Your mother will come out to the train to fetch you.”

“What if she ain’t there?” Binnie asked.

“What if she got killed on the way?” Alf said.

Binnie nodded. “Right. What if a bomb blew ’er up?”

“Don’t listen to them,” Eileen said, thinking, Why can’t it be the Hodbins I’m sending home? “They’re teasing you, Theodore. There aren’t any bombs in London.” Yet.

“Why’d they send us ’ere then?” Alf said, “’Cept to get us away from the bombs?” He stuck his face in Theodore’s. “If you go ’ome, a bomb’ll prob’ly get you.”

“Or mustard gas,” Binnie said, clutching her throat and pretending to choke.

Theodore looked up at Eileen. “I want to go home.”

“I don’t blame you,” Eileen said. She picked up his suitcase and walked him over to the slowing train. It was full of soldiers. They peered around the blackout curtains in the compartments, waving and grinning, and jammed the platforms at both ends of the cars, some of them half hanging out over the steps. “Come to see us off to the war, ducks?” one of them called to Eileen as the car slowed to a whooshing halt in front of her. “Come to kiss us goodbye?”

Oh, dear, I hope this isn’t a troop train. “Is this the passenger train to London?” she asked hopefully.

“It is,” the soldier said. “Hop aboard, luv.” He leaned down, one hand extended, the other clutching the side railing.

“We’ll take good care of you,” a beefy, red-faced soldier next to him said. “Won’t we, boys?” and there was an answering chorus of hoots and whistles.