Deeply-drowsy, bewildered, but refreshed, I scrambled out of my blankets and blinked about. Where was——
Ah! The hut!
Every mattress but Elizabeth's and mine was rolled up and stowed away. Every "Campite" had disappeared but big Vic and two who were on fatigue. Vic was hooking scarlet stripes to the sleeve of her clean smock. The others cleared breakfast away from the mess-table.
"You buck up and dress," Vic advised us. "The Timber-Girls and Miss Easton are all off to the woods already"—this was the first I'd heard of so many of the girls here being in the Forestry Corps—"and the other two farm-pupils have gone on.
"It's no use you asking for any bathrooms, Celery-face," he added good-humouredly. "Here's a basin. Young Sybil always takes a dip in the pool just outside, but you've no time today."
I also had no wish, at that moment, to go and dip into any ice-cold, fresh-water pools, out of doors and in the chill grey dawn. Brrr!
"No time for you to sit down for your breakfast either," Vic pursued, as we huddled on our unfamiliar garments and struggled with the lacings of our leggings. "Lil! Just pour these girls out their tea, and butter 'em some bread—they must eat as they go along."
In the early sunshine on the road Elizabeth and I devoured the country bread and the real farm-butter. Our guide and mentor, Vic, strode along between us in the slouch hat, holland overall, breeches, and leggings that looked so natural and becoming on her, though my chum and I, glancing at each other, could not yet grow accustomed to our own appearances.
My feet seemed to belong to somebody else, in these boots! They were so very different from the feet in the shoes that had pattered down streets and along corridors on my daily tube scramble in town!
Harry had always "noticed" what shoes I wore, more than any other part of my get-up. But now——