The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Susan said we wouldn’t have been able to dig the hole ourselves, not if we
worked all week on it. She took drinks out to the vicar, and said so. The vicar,
sweating in his shirt sleeves, said it was his pleasure. They’d been putting up
Anderson shelters all over the village. It was good work for the boys.
Some of the boys were evacuees and some weren’t. One was Stephen
White.
He grinned and rested his shovel when I went over to him. “So you’re not
busy every day?” he asked.
“I am busy,” I said. “I ride. I help Fred Grimes. I do things.”
“I just meant, you said you were too busy to come to tea.”
He used a dirty hand to push his hair away from his face, and it left a
smear of mud on his cheek. Still, like me, he looked better than he had in
London. His clothes were neat and clean, and he was taller.
Something about his grin made me feel I could trust him. “I wouldn’t
know what to do at tea,” I said.
He shrugged. “Sure you do. Bet you have tea every night.”
“But that colonel—”
“He’s an old ducks, he is. You’d like him once you got to know him.”
“How come you didn’t go home with the rest of your family?” I’d been
wanting to ask for ages.
Stephen looked uncomfortable. “The colonel’s mostly blind,” he said.
“You’ve seen him. And he’s got no family, and when I first got here he was
really feeble. A bunch of the food he’d been eating had gone bad, only he’s
lost his sense of taste too, so he couldn’t tell, and so it made him sick, and his
house was just awful. Bugs everywhere, and rats, and he couldn’t fix any of
it.
“I cleaned the place up. The vicar’s wife taught me to cook, just easy
things, and she brings us food sometimes too. She’s nice. And I read to the
colonel, and he likes that. He’s got piles of books.” Stephen picked his shovel
back up and started heaving dirt onto the top of the shelter. “Mum’s after me
to come home. I’d like to go. I miss home, I do, but if I leave, the colonel’ll
die. He really will. He’s got no one.”
Stephen looked around the muddy garden, at the house and stable and
Butter’s field. “Pretty nice place here.”
“Yes.”