You see our time was nearly up at the Practice Farm. Our six weeks' training was drawing to a close. If, at the tests, we gained a certain percentage of marks, Elizabeth and I would be considered "finished pupils," and we would be passed out and sent off.
Where?
Heaven and the Organizing Secretary of the County knew where that job would be found.
I told myself that I only hoped it would be a good long trail away from Careg, away from the farm of bitter-sweet memories.
Vic was instructive on the subject of the changes to come.
"Any people ought to like the look o' you two, now you've shaped to the work," she kindly remarked. "Still, you never know whether looks is going to help a girl or to stand in her way in this world. A nice thing it would be if you was landed like one of the smartest-looking girls I ever saw join up, Chrissie Devon!"
"What happened to her?" I inquired.
"Chrissie was fine with horses," Vic said, "all her people having ridden. She was a clever girl, well educated, and a beautiful figure on horseback. I-T, she was. The secretary got her a job with a brother of our Mr. Rhys, the bailiff, who keeps a lot of horses. Thought it would be just the right thing for her. So it would have. The only thing was, our Mr. Rhys's brother didn't consider himself half-artful. He——"
Vic broke off to laugh.
"He turned up at the station before the one that she was going to, and saw her in the train. And," Vic concluded with an impressive nod, "sent her back to the depot by the next one. Then he strafed our poor little organizing secretary till she didn't dare see him for a year. 'The idea!' says he, 'of sending me a girl that looked like that! Me, a widower. She would be owning the horses and me inside o' six months!'"