Presently Mr. Rhys, the examiner, had taken Elizabeth and me into an empty shed, and, looking doubtfully upon us, began to ask us simple questions as to our everyday work. I was glad to realize that—as is so often the case with the male examiner—he was more nervous than we were. Or did he think that we, too, had designs upon his widowerhood?
At all events, the marks that Mr. Rhys put down upon his papers seemed to be satisfactory.
"Well, after all, I may have squeezed through!" I thought.
And half an hour later Mrs. Price came to Elizabeth and me in the kitchen, where she had insisted upon our having a cup of tea after our labours, and told us that we had both got through our tests with nearly full marks in all subjects.
Pride filled my heart, as you may imagine. Surely it was not an unnatural thing for the thought to flash across me:
"Well, now Captain Holiday will hear that! He'll know that I am not a complete imbecile at my job after all, even if he did go away this afternoon before he saw that I had got over my nervousness!"—for the whole of the Lodge party had disappeared towards the farm before I had begun upon my second cow. "He'll have to think that I am some sort of a credit to him after all the tips he's given me. And perhaps he will say so to Muriel, even if he is in love with her."
And then I put away those thoughts.
As Elizabeth and I tramped back to camp with the glad news that we were now fully fledged Land-workers, I turned resolutely to the future and the new job.
The little organizing secretary had promised to let us know in a day or two what she had settled for us. She had also promised to arrange that Elizabeth and I should be sent somewhere together.
For the meantime we were to stay where we were in camp, as it seemed scarcely worth while to move us to the depot. The secretary said she was almost certain she had got us our job—at a rectory with a farm attached. It was at the other side of the county.