“I’m not tired. I haven’t worked as hard as you and Edith, because I stopped to read Bob’s letter,” said Lucy Gordon, turning toward the other girl of the trio, who was likewise lying on the grass, her heavy pigtail fallen across one sunburned cheek.
“U-h!” grunted Edith Morris with closed eyelids. “That last row of beans was almost too much for me. Gardening isn’t my strong point. I’d rather be junior hospital aide all day.”
Lucy’s hazel eyes wandered from her two companions across the wide, level stretch of green, lit by the noonday sun, to where the light, spring shadows of the oak groves checkered its edges. The smooth turf was all cut up into a dozen big truck-gardens. With reckless disregard of the beautiful velvet lawn, busy hands had plowed and planted, until everywhere were springing up young corn and beans, peas, lentils and potato plants. Mr. Arthur Leslie’s big estate was given up to raising food for hungry mouths, and this little corner of it showed but a part of the changes that had come to Highland House since the beginning of the war.
It was the second week of May, 1918, and Lucy Gordon was in England. Though only a few miles from London, this quiet countryside seemed very peaceful, but that was only when you looked up at the clear, bright sky, or across the green fields. To watch the people at their daily tasks was to see that not one of them, from school children to old men and women, was for one moment idle, or forgetful of the burden each had to share. Certainly Lucy could not forget it, but she often thanked the constant work for the distraction it gave her anxious thoughts. It was two months since her father, now Colonel Gordon, had been ordered from his home station at Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor, to the western front. His departure had followed quickly her brother Bob’s convalescence after his German captivity, and on top of it had come her mother’s decision to put her knowledge of the care of the sick and of children to some use in the country which held her son and husband. Six weeks ago Mrs. Gordon had sailed to join English and American workers in the reclaimed French villages behind the lines, and with her had gone Lucy, after countless prayers to her mother, as well as to Mr. Leslie, her kind and sympathetic Cousin Henry, to be allowed to accept her English cousins’ invitation and remain as near as she could to her family.
“I’ll take care of her, Sally,—let her come,” Mr. Leslie had begged for her in those last, hurried days at Governor’s Island. “Arthur Leslie’s girl will love to have her there, and it’s tough leaving her behind, even at your mother’s. I’ll be back and forth often from the Continent, you know, and can bring you news of each other.” For Mr. Leslie, giving up the active superintendence of his big lumber camps, had organized and equipped a Red Cross unit which he meant to accompany to the French front. In the end he had his way, and Mrs. Gordon, only too glad to have Lucy near her so long as she was safe, had given her consent.
That was six weeks ago, and they had passed more quickly than any weeks in the fifteen years of Lucy’s life. For since coming to the beautiful Surrey home of her unknown English cousins, she had worked, like them, in almost every waking moment, and longed like them to do more, far more than was in their power, for the cause of the Allies.
Presently Janet roused herself to say thoughtfully, as she blinked up at the sun, “It is harder for Lucy than for us, because her family are all away. Our brothers are gone, Edie, and my father, but we both have our mothers left—though Mum wants to join Cousin Sally this summer, Lucy, so perhaps we’ll be left alone. You know your mother wrote how few there are over there to help, and how many of those poor French children are without homes. I wish I were old enough to go.”
Lucy’s eyes flashed instant response to her cousin’s words. In spite of her hard daily tasks her eager, restless spirit was still unsatisfied, and she dreamed, as in the year gone by, of greater and braver efforts.
“That’s so,” assented Edith, lazily opening her eyes, as she pondered Janet’s first words. “Of course Janet is your cousin, but she’s Scotch and English, and you’re American. Is all your family in France, Lucy?”
“No—there’s William,” said Lucy, smiling to herself as a little figure came before her mind’s eye with the name. “He’s my six-year-old brother, at my grandmother’s in Connecticut. But my father is with the A.E.F.[[1]] So is Bob—in aviation—and Mother is behind the lines.” She sighed, but a quick realization of the truth made her add more cheerfully, “Still, it’s a lot to be as near to them as I am.”