The big dark Land Girl "Vic," who sat next to me, showed all her white teeth in a large and friendly grin.
"Ah, you'll be all right. You wait till you've stopped down here a couple of weeks, Celery-face, and your own boy won't know you again!" she assured me in a ringing Cockney accent that set all the others laughing delightedly.
How popular she seemed! Good-natured, too. Presently I found her taking Elizabeth and me under her wing while the other girls went on with their various occupations.
None of them seemed to want to fling herself down and rest, doing absolutely nothing—which was all I should feel fit for, I thought gloomily. From the scullery-shed outside the hut came the sound of clinking crockery and of laughter, as two of the girls washed up. Overpoweringly cheery young women! I thought, peevish with fatigue.
Vic's Cockney voice rose above the rest of the chatter, proffering encouragement and information.
"You'll be surprised!" she declared. "You won't want to leave, ever——"
Chill silence from us.
"You'll see it's a fine life when you get your hand in at the work," she continued, undaunted by our silence. "Tomorrow morning you start. I'll take you along to Mr. Price; he's the farmer at the Practice place. Oh, he's all right, Mr. Price is; and her, too. They won't be hard on you, seeing you've never worked before.... Oh! You have worked? ... Oh, in business. Ah! that's a lady's job. This other's all right, though. Don't you go telling 'em you know all about farming just because you've made hay once or twice on your holidays——"
"I wouldn't," I assured her.
"Oh! Well, I did. Talk about laugh ever since!" chuckled Vic. "Why, you don't know how much you don't know until you start in the Land Army! Why, one of the wounded Tommies from the hospital here says to me on the road just now, 'Are you on the land, miss?' I said, 'Well, I'm not on the sea!'"