For the guising, the children went around the village in a group, knocking from door to door.
Their costumes were basic this year, even old sheets needed to be saved. The poor bairns; there was enough real life horror in the world, they didn't need to search for any extra.
Some of them chatted amiably as Elsie handed out toffee apples, but some scampered away without a backward glance. She begrudged neither encounter. One could never guess how a child would act when so far away from their mothers and fathers.
When the laughter and commotion in her laneway had mostly died away, she peeked out her front door to see Miss Sybbie waving cheerio whilst herding the children back to the Abbey, where the Granthams were hosting a party for all.
It had been Miss Sybbie's idea, of course, to ship the children from London to Downton. Trainloads were being evacuated to the countryside, and the abbey could hold more than the average house, she'd said, in a tone so like her mother's Elsie's eyes had stung with tears.
The blitz continued, however, and Elsie had even felt compelled to put in an offer to help.
"I'm an old woman though, Miss Sybbie. They need to rediscover fun, and I'm not sure my cottage with a couple of chickens is where they'll find it."
"Nonsense, Mrs Hughes" -Miss Sybbie, along with everyone else in the village, continued to call Elsie by her housekeeper name, just as Elsie stuck with the childhood nickname for the now married woman- "they're here to stay safe. And rediscover fresh air and peace. They can run around to their heart's content during the day without you needing to nanny them. I only fret that they won't wear you out. It will mean preparing extra meals and then the cleaning on top of it. Are you sure you're up to it?"
Even though Elsie had insisted she was, Tom had chosen that moment to arrive home and had sharply reprimanded his daughter in regards to burdening his ex-fellow servant.
The war dragged on, however, until Miss Sybbie was forced to even place two children in Elsie's care some six weeks ago.
As Elsie had feared, it wasn't the extra work the young siblings forced upon her that caused her anxiety, rather the fact that she'd immediately become besotted with them.
What was she to do when they returned to their parents? What was she to do if they couldn't?
She heard them returning before she saw them. Their laughter and squeals of delight warmed her bones which had frozen up with rheumatism badly this morning, meaning she shimmied to the door and opened it as they barrelled through.
"Mrs Hughes! Mrs Hughes!" they cried in unison, hugging her legs tight.
"It was the best party!"
"There was cake!"
"And biscuits!"
"And music and dancing!"
"And more apples! So many apples, Mrs Hughes!"
Elsie laughed at their flushed features as they finally came up for breath and peeled themselves off her. "I guess the ones we made earlier won't be the highlight then?" she asked as they dutifully hung their coats and stowed their boots.
"No, ours were the best. Mr Tom said so."
"And even Lord George said he'd tell a Mrs Hughes toffee apple anywhere."
"Well, I hope that's a compliment," Elsie drawled, "but one can never be sure with Lord George."
"I didn't like Lord George," Harriet confessed, her blue eyes round with fear that she'd revealed too much.
"Whyever not?" Elsie asked, flicking the child's unruly golden ringlets tenderly.
"Is it because he hasn't got legs, is it, Harri? Because you know he can't help that. That's from the war," her brother said, in a tone that belied his ten years. Elsie would add an extra prayer tonight that the war would end before the boy was old enough to enlist.
"No, it was after. When they were telling ghost stories. He told one about you, Mrs Hughes."
Elsie raised her eyes, and bit her lip. "About me? Heaven forbid." Was she going to float through the abbey, rattling her keys, in Lord George's story, she wondered curiously. "This I'll have to hear. But first why don't you both go get out of these scary costumes and into your pyjamas."
"And can we have hot cocoa by the fire, Mrs Hughes?"
Of course she instantly yielded to the big eyes blinking so beseechingly, as the boy knew she would. "I suppose, you scamp, just this once." The 'once' part would surely prove to turn into many more times, considering how she was wrapped around their fingers.
Half an hour later, they were settled in front of the fire, with lights on in the kitchen and dining room for Harriet, who had come to hate the darkness after having to spend so many nights in blackout. They sipped on their hot drinks, discussing the party.
"So that was when Lord George began telling ghost stories."
"At first they were funny, but then Miss Sybbie got very angry at him when he told us about the ghost of the old butler Carson."
"His story was how the old butler of Downton died, but never crossed over to the afterlife. He says that they hear him in the attics at night."
"Fiddlesticks," Elsie scoffed, placing her now near-empty cup to one side. "You don't believe such gibberish, do you, Harriet?"
"Well, I didn't, until Miss Sybbie got ever so cross. She told him that he shouldn't say such things in front of us because we were staying here with you, Mrs Hughes."
"Lord George then said Miss Sybbie must be getting ever so desperate if she'd let Old Lady Carson take in two of her charity cases."
"This made Miss Sybbie madder. They started to row even more. She told him he could leave our Halloween party and go to his own. His pity party? Whatever that is. And that his mother would never forgive him if she should hear him talking so about her favourite servant. And that her father would never forgive him if he should hear him talking so about his."
"But none of this made any sense to us. What did she mean, Mrs Hughes?"
Elsie bit her bottom lip. "It means that poor Lord George has a long way to go until he recovers from his injuries, is what it means. It means he's not ready to live in a wheelchair, and who can blame him." Of course, the children also didn't know what she and Miss Sybbie did about Lord George's otherwise functioning body. Besides his missing legs, both from the knee down, he had suffered horrific burns to his chest and back.
"I can," her new ward interrupted her sympathetic musing. "My Uncle Jack didn't return from the Western Front in a wheelchair. He didn't return at all."
Elsie reached over and pulled the young lad into a quick cuddle. There would be no innocence for this generation, she should remember.
"Who's Old Lady Carson, Mrs Hughes?" Harriet asked.
Elsie smiled. "I suppose Lord George meant me. My real name isn't Mrs Hughes, you see. My real name is Mrs Carson. My husband, Mr Carson, died three years ago. He used to be the butler at the big house."
Both children blinked in unison to her confession. She rose and plucked the photograph from the mantle, bringing it closer for their inspection.
"That's us. On our wedding day."
"He doesn't look like a scary ghost," Harriet confirmed. "Look how happy he seems."
"We were both very happy, children. He was, and still is, the love of my life."
"He's not a ghost? Haunting the abbey?"
"No, I can assure you he doesn't haunt the abbey," she said with absolute conviction. "He's far too busy haunting me each and every night, so he would scarcely have time to nip up to the big house as well, shouldn't you think? Now, come along, it's late. Enough stuff and nonsense about ghosts. To bed."
As she tucked the children into the twin beds of the spare room of the cottage, it seemed their insatiable appetite for horror could not be appeased, however.
"Your Mr Carson. Did he hate children? Enough to eat them?"
"Oh!" For the first time, Elsie's temper flared. "Is that what Lord George said? I'll forgive his young lordship a lot of things, but that I won't stand by and tolerate."
"Don't be silly, Harriet. Mrs Hughes would never marry a man like that, would you, Mrs Hughes?"
"No, I would not, Charlie. My Charlie was the softest old fool when it came to the young ones. Far too soft on Lady Mary and her son, I'm sure."
The boy in the bed gasped. "Your Mr Carson's name was Charlie. Like my name?"
"Yes."
"That's why Miss Sybbie was worried the day she brought us here. When she told you my name was Charlie, you got all weepy."
A couple of tears gathered in her eyes again now. She had become a sentimental old fool.
"You still miss your Charlie, Mrs Hughes?" young Charlie asked.
"I don't have to, because he's never left. He's still here, in my heart." She moved her hand from upon her chest to hover over the young lad's. "Just like your uncle Jack will remain in your heart. No one we love truly leaves us."
At the door she added, "Sweet dreams, my dears. I know mine shall be."
Downstairs was quiet and empty when Elsie returned to clear away their mugs. After the sun had dipped beneath the horizon, it had turned cooler and the wind had picked up. The cottage creaked and groaned in protest like Elsie's bones did quite often nowadays.
Elsie snorted, imagining the newly atmospheric weather conditions would be causing many of the children up at the abbey to huddle beneath their blankets considering the stories of ghouls and ghosts that had been passed around.
She even found herself jumping in fright when the telephone began to ring.
It was Tom Branson, calling to check on Elsie and the children and apologising after he'd learnt of his nephew's behaviour.
By the time Elsie hung up, having assured Tom she hadn't become some fragile thin-skinned dolt in her dotage, it was late, and after checking the locks, she happily climbed the stairs for the final time that night.
In the bedroom, she switched on her bedside table lamp and picked up her book, contemplating reading a little before she fell asleep.
Next thing she knew she was jolted awake. Her book had fallen from her grasp some time ago, it appeared, and she shuffled it to the bedside table along with her spectacles.
"Do you think I should go around and scare the kid into showing some respect to my wife?"
She gasped and rolled over, but then smiled at the fact Charlie wasn't worried about Lord George disrespecting his name, only hers. "He's hardly a child anymore, Charlie," she reminded him gently.
He made a grumbling noise at the back of his throat.
"What were you thinking of?"
"Something like this-" Her bedroom door slammed shut before the bedside lamp flickered briefly and then turned off completely. Before her eyes had a chance to adjust to the pitch black, a candle upon her dresser lit up.
"That could frighten most," she murmured.
"But not you, my love?" he asked, the rustle of the bedding telling her he was settling behind her. She wriggled backwards. Although she couldn't see Charlie, he could still warm her back.
The first time she'd felt his presence was on a cold night. She'd been struggling to get warm enough in her suddenly too big and too lonely bed when she'd felt a familiar heat leaning against her back. As if her husband was holding her tight. Now, she truly believed he had been.
And as she believed Charlie was here, she also believed he could go and haunt Lord George. "We know more than some the horrors of shellshock." She needn't remind him of the horrors they'd seen from those who went to the last war. "So we must offer our empathy, not traumatise him further."
"True. We wouldn't want him to turn to the bottle."
"Or think he was losing his mind."
"You're not losing your mind, Elsie."
"I'm not? It would seem the most likely explanation. That, or I'm dreaming."
"The latter might be more likely, I agree. Did you dream about me before we married?"
Even though she'd been married to Charlie for years, and had been friends with him for many before that, she blushed at the implication.
"I know I dreamt of you before-"
"You never did."
"I've never lied to you, and I won't be starting now I'm dead." Then, he added, "Dead but not gone."
She thought for a moment. Surely Miss Sybbie wouldn't entrust the lives of two children with her should she think Elsie was losing her marbles. Perhaps then, dreaming was the only explanation. "If I'm dreaming, then it's a beautiful dream from which I don't wish to wake."
Another thought then occurred to her. "If I'm not dreaming, ghosts exist."
"Lord George was right? I'm a character in a ghost story, after all?"
She snuggled in and closed her eyes, fully content for the first time all day. "You're a character in a story, alright Charlie. Only it's our story, not Lord George's."
At this conclusion, she heard his pleased grumble behind her and she began to drift back to sleep, his breath whispering across her cheek.
"Our love story," she added softly as the candle's flame flickered out.
The End