That work saved me, my self-respect, my spirits, and my looks from the ruin that threatens the very being of the girl who is crossed in love. How she endures that is so largely a matter of health after all. My health was now magnificent. Every day I grew fitter, more vigorous, rosier (though my nickname of "Celery-face" would persist to the end of my life here!) and more full of zest for anything that happened along. For on the Land one soon learns not only to take the rough with the smooth, but also to take plenty of interest in both.
Now, after a couple of weeks of strenuous toil, there came a promise of "smooth"; a little treat.
A note arrived for me at the Land Girls' Camp which said:
"DEAR CELERY-FACE—
"These nice people that I work for suggest that I should ask a couple of 'my young friends' over to tea next Sunday. Will you and Mop be the young friends? They know Captain Holiday and are asking him, so I expect he will bring Mop's 'lovely Spaniard' with him. Do come.
"Yours, SYBIL.
"P. S.—These people think the uniform so 'picturesque,' so come in it, even if Mop does want to wear garden-party clothes for the fiancé!"
By the way, I have not yet dwelt on the enormous excitement that blazed all over our Camp at the news that "little Mop, the Man-hater!" had actually got engaged to be married to "Colonel Fielding who was that Spanish lady at the Concert!"
That sensation could have been beaten by nothing, unless perhaps news had come that same day of the sudden and complete surrender of the whole German Army.
Anybody who has lived the communal life among girls (as most girls have in these days of Women's Service!) can imagine the whirlwind of exclamations, congratulations, questions, laughter that almost carried the newly-engaged messmate off her sturdily-booted little feet. Only, no imagination can do justice to the golden camaraderie with which that Timber-gang and those other Land-workers at our Camp took Elizabeth to their hearts. (I hoped that her fiancé would realize it; for after that he could never again say that girls were usually "little" and "spiteful"!) They had always liked my plucky, downright little chum. Now, they couldn't do enough for her!