Mutters from the boys here.
"Yes, you're afraid that when it's shown that we girls can do most o' your work you'll be pushed out after all!" went on the relentless Vic. "So you try and bring a bad name on the Land Army, you little blighters, who take jolly good care you aren't in any army at all! You make game of our uniform, you that haven't a suit o' khaki among the lot of you! Nice ones you are to talk!"
Here there was an uneasy movement in the enemy's ranks.
Skulking little wretches! There are some of these in every place, town or country—the dregs of a noble race whose cream was taken first of all. Probably as soon as our backs were turned they would have wheeled round and begun to shout after us again. But this Vic did not mean to allow. She kept her face turned squarely on the retreat.
She called out after them:
"Making fun, were you, because we girls wear the breeches? A good job for the country that we do! As for you, it's a pity they can't take and make you," raising her voice to a shout, "wear petticoats!"
They were now out of ear-shot, so she turned, flushed and triumphant.
"I'm astonished at you," Peggy launched her favourite dictum reproachfully, as we plodded on in the wet. "I wouldn't stoop to answer back a lot of louts like that. I wouldn't speak to 'em."
"Daresay you wouldn't," retorted Vic, good-humouredly, "but if we were all as jolly dignified as you and Celery-face here, those Cuthberts would go through the rest of their natch never knowing what a decent girl thought of 'em! So I thought I might as well demean myself to tell them off proper just for once in a way!"
With which conclusion we found ourselves just outside the tiny chemist's shop. A dog-cart was drawn up there—little did I suspect at that moment who had driven in it! I only noticed that it was occupied by a little stable-boy who did odd jobs about the Lodge for Captain Holiday.