"I have put before you the disadvantages of this life. Long hours. Hard work. Poor pay. After you get your board and lodging a shilling a day, perhaps. Very poor pay. But, girls—our boys at the Front are offering their lives for just that. Won't you offer your services for that—and for them?"
The voice attracted me, the Welsh voice that holds the secret of being clear, yet soft, with the ends of its words pronounced as crisply as by a well-trained singer. It held me, that voice, while the speaker touched on the urgent need of workers to fill the places of men, who had gone from farm, field, dairy and byre.
Ah, the charming picture that she made! A bright, sturdy flower of girlhood set against-the parched stone-work of Town! She wore the Land Girl's uniform that sets off a woman's shape as no other costume has done yet. Under her slouch-hat her face was vividly brown and rose-coloured, with dark eyes alight. Her fresh, light belted smock, with its green armlet and scarlet crown, looked cool as well as trim.
The sight of her, I thought, should bring in as many recruits as the speech. She looked as if she'd never dreamt of such things as unventilated offices, typewriters that clicked mechanically all day, nervous headaches, lives soured and blighted at twenty-two! Enviously I glanced at her. Suddenly—was it my imagination?—she looked straight back at me over the heads of the crowd. It was to me she seemed to be speaking now.
"You are offered some good things in this new life, girls. Good health. Good sleep——"
Here I smiled bitterly. Good sleep.... I'd had a whole fortnight of hideously broken nights.
"There's no sleep like that of the worker on the land!" declared the recruiting land girl.
"Another thing you're offered is a good conscience with which to meet those lads when they return from fighting for you. Lastly—though I don't know if it's worth mentioning, really"—here her white teeth flashed in a merry smile across her rosy face—"you are offered a good complexion!"
Then something else unexpected happened. She jumped lightly down, and it was first of all to me—me!—that she made her way.
Straight up to me she came. She looked me full in the face, smiled prettily, and in that clear voice that sounded home-like to me because my home had been where she, too, came from, she said: