Now! This time the spade seemed ever so much lighter, and yet I'd managed to get quite a good load on to it.
Presently I was startled to hear a bell clanging noisily across the yard. A woman's voice called to some one "Dinner!"
CHAPTER VI
THE FARMHOUSE MEAL
"Thank God and the Land Army for my good dinner; Amen."—GRACE (revised).
Dinner! At the word there invaded me an extraordinary feeling, to which I'd been a stranger for months in town. What was it?—hunger, ravenous and primitive—fervently I hoped that this summons meant dinner for everybody!
I glanced at my filthy forearms and hands. Remembering my "blunder" about the bedrooms in camp, I did not look for anybody to tell me where the bathroom was.
I made for the pump in the yard. And then, as I dried my arms and face as well as I could on a comparatively clean piece of my smock, I heard a good-natured Cockney voice behind me say:
"Oh, look at Celery Face sluicing herself in a young cataract!"
Turning, I found big Vic coming up with Elizabeth. My chum's small face was redder than I had ever seen it. It wore an "in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound" expression, and her uniform (though not filthy like mine) was no longer the immaculate fancy dress that it had seemed on the road to work.