“I’m coming, Janet,” she answered, putting back the letter in its envelope and rising swiftly from the window-seat.
Lucy seldom indulged now in the reveries she had once been so fond of. They were too apt to become sad ones, and she wanted only to follow the example of her cousins and do each day’s work cheerfully. Rebellious moments came, and this last half hour had been one of them, when nothing seemed to matter but the endless salt waves that separated her from all she loved the best. But Lucy had gained stores of both patience and courage since that dark day in December of the year before when Bob had been reported missing.
She went out of her room and ran down the wide staircase to the floor below. The big, many-windowed drawing-room on the right had most of the furniture removed or pushed close to the wall to make place for bales of gauze and muslin, for Highland House was the headquarters of the district Red Cross Chapter. Beyond the drawing-room was the library, and there a table at one side was set with kettle and teacups, and the jingle of china and silver sounded from the doorway.
“Here I am, Cousin Janet. I hope you’ve kept a muffin for me?” said Lucy, looking inquiringly at the table and at the small, bright-eyed lady who presided at it with quick-moving fingers.
“Of course we have,” declared Mrs. Leslie with a nod and smile, as she handed Lucy a cup of hot milk and water, with a dash of tea in it.
“We’ve kept two, even,” said Janet, pointing to the muffin plate from her lazy seat in a big chair. “It’s wonderful what an appetite hoeing corn gives one—even for war rations.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever again complain of food at home,” sighed Lucy as she sank into a chair. She had learned some lessons about the value of a hearty meal during those eight weeks in England. There was enough to eat at Highland House, but it was simple food, limited to each one’s needs.
“This looks wonderful,” she added, carefully spreading the hot, split muffin with a slender share of margarine, for butter was an unknown luxury outside the hospitals.
“That must have been a long letter you had from Bob,” remarked Janet, searching her cousin’s face for signs of unusual worry or homesickness, after her hour’s seclusion. “But perhaps you weren’t reading it much of the time?”
“No, I wasn’t,” said Lucy. “I was thinking about—oh, you know—all sorts of things. But everything Bob wrote was pretty good news. He’s a pilot, as he told me last week, and doing the work he loves to do. He spoke of seeing Arthur very soon, as they’re not far apart.”