They will tell you, as Mr. Price would, that we have been splendid, that we can milk, tend stock, clean out sheds, drive the motor-tractors, carry out the jobs of which there are never any end about the farm, and take the places of the farm-boys now at the Front with the utmost credit to our sex, but——
But it still takes the strength of two of us to do the work of one of them.
More workers, still more workers, needed on England's harvest! Every day the corn ripening that should feed England; every day the boats going down by means of which England was to be fed!
Do you wonder that my own private worries sank into the background for a space? I was surprised to find that the thought of Dick Holiday could be kept well at the back of my mind; and that I could even stop myself from grieving fruitlessly over the bitterness of the idea that he might have been mine, and from sentimentalizing over my (very vague) memories of him as a lad of nineteen at my home.
I was "seriously wounded" in the love-fight. But I could keep myself well in hand. I reflected that now I knew why men take their love disappointments in a more balanced way (at least outwardly) than women were wont to do. Men have not only work, but more interesting work with which to fill their baffled hearts. As a result of our taking to these jobs, perhaps there would now be fewer women in the world who would allow themselves to be warped and blighted by unhappy love affairs.
At least it was something to hope for! thought I, turning from my own problem to that of the farmers.
The solution came—at all events to Mr. Price and some of his friends in the neighbourhood.
One smiling morning, as Elizabeth, Vic, and I tramped to work along the lanes, the solution overtook and passed us.
It took the form of a big dray drawn by two grey horses and driven by a rather pale-faced young sergeant in khaki with one empty sleeve; on this dray sat comfortably a group of six or seven men not wounded at all, apparently, wearing grey coats and dark trousers patched with big ovals of scarlet and bright blue cloth. On their heads they wore—all except one of them—small round caps having red bands and a button in the front. They were blond, sunburnt, heavy-looking; and they turned an inquiring stare upon us as the dray went by.
With one voice Vic, Elizabeth and I exclaimed involuntarily: