The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

days when I was there we all worked together. Fred had started me properly
jumping now, little jumps, but not today because the snow was too deep.
“You know you’re supposed to get Susan a Christmas present,” Maggie
said as we measured oats in the feed room.
“Why?” I asked. I’d heard about presents. I didn’t get them. I didn’t need
to give them. I said so.
Maggie rolled her eyes at me. “Of course you’ll be getting presents,” she
said. “Susan is nice to you. Not like some.”
I nodded. Some of the evacuees, those that were left, weren’t treated very
kindly. Not because of anything to do with them, but because they’d been put
with mean old hags who wouldn’t have welcomed Jesus himself. At least
that’s what Jamie said. He talked to the other evacuees at school, and they
were envious, they were, that they hadn’t been chosen last.
“So,” Maggie said, “you should get her something. It’s only right.”
“I haven’t got any money. Not any at all.”
“Don’t you get pocket money?”
“No. Do you?”
“Oh,” Maggie said. She chewed her bottom lip while she thought. “Well,
you could find some job to do, and earn something. I suppose. Or you could
make her something. She’d like that. My mum always likes it when I make
her something.”
It was an interesting idea. I thought about it as I started home. Susan had
been teaching me to knit so that I could knit for the soldiers, but so far the
only thing I’d made had been a washcloth. It was a hideous washcloth, wider
on one end than the other, with loopy stitches that looked nothing like
Susan’s. Susan claimed it didn’t matter, because soldiers would be glad to
have a washcloth no matter what it looked like. She also said knitting was like
writing, or riding, or anything else: You got better the more you worked at it.
I could work at it, if I hurried. I turned Butter in the road, and, despite his
protests, made him go back through the snow to Maggie’s house. Fred looked
surprised to see me. “Trouble?” he asked.
“I need some wool,” I said.