To go meant good-bye to so many things I'd come to care for. Good-bye to the Prices, the gentle giant and his dainty wife, to whom her silvered hair gave the look of a little French marquise; good-bye to their kindliness and interest—not every land-worker finds employers as helpful and as considerate. However charming the Rectory people might turn out to be I could not hope that they would come up to these kind people.
It meant good-bye to the Practice Farm, of which I'd become attached to every field, every distant view, every shed—even the celebrated cow-house that I'd cleaned out on that first morning! Good-bye to the merry midday meals in the jolly kitchen! Good-bye to the dear old white mare, and the cows who now knew me well! Good-bye to the morning tramp to work through the dew-spangled, ferny lanes! Good-bye, too, to the life in camp; good-bye to Vic, the irresistible Cockney, to Sybil, and little Peggy with her "I'm astonished at you!"—to Curley, to the red-haired Aggie with her rich Welsh voice, and to the young forewoman who had mothered the whole mixed lot of us!
We had been one big family; I had found sisters of every class and kind. Now I had to leave them all, after sharing their life and their hearts, for six unforgettable weeks. To part—with the chance that we should never meet again! It's the fate that breaks up so many a cheery mess, both in the Army and the Land Army! To go meant all this.
But to stay meant, for me, seeing Captain Holiday still. How could I grow to forget him and thrust him out of my mind, as I hoped, if I knew that round any corner I should meet him still, the golden-and-white collie trailing at his heels? How could I grow resigned and philosophical, and all those things which I meant to be, if I had the constant pain of seeing him with Muriel? (The Elveys, by the way, seemed to be staying on indefinitely at the Lodge.) Oh, I thought that to stay was the very worst thing I could do for myself!
But then I hadn't only myself to think about.
At the very sound of the words "stay on" I'd seen Elizabeth's small face lighted up as if by a ray of sunshine from within. She'd turned it hastily away again. But well I knew what her sentiments were!
So I decided in an instant.
"Oh! If it could be arranged! Of course we'd both prefer to stay on here. We'll stay!" I said, without hesitating.
Enormous relief appeared in the very tilt of Elizabeth's Board of Agriculture hat. As for the young Colonel—what did he think or feel? Was he interested in my little infatuated chum, or wasn't he? Was he just another slave at the chariot wheels of the all-conquering Muriel? And what had he said to Captain Holiday about our staying here? Or had it been the other young man's idea? Afterwards I wondered very much about this.
Why had Captain Holiday thought of us? The Practice Farm was on his land but what had the actual working of it got to do with him, he being merely down in this part of the country on sick leave like his friend, Colonel Fielding?