The first game of tennis, the first bicycle ride, the first row, the first long tramp of a summer holiday—everybody knows the ache that comes after these. Multiply that ache by fifty, and you'll have some idea of what happens after the first day's land-work. Personally I felt it would be all I could do to drag my stiffening limbs back to the hut!
I also felt that for Elizabeth to cross-question me at this moment was adding insult to aches. After staring at dinner, too!
"Elizabeth, you are a little owl," I informed her. "I know what you imagine. Can't any sort of young man say a word to me without it's starting some idea of a love-affair?"
Elizabeth, set-faced, said coolly, "Apparently not."
I straightened my back indignantly. Then caught my breath because it hurt me so. Hoping she hadn't noticed this, I demanded, "What d'you mean by that?"
"Wherever you go, Joan, young men always seem to break out," Elizabeth replied rebukefully.
She spoke the words "young men" just as Farmer Price might have mentioned caterpillars in his standing crops.
"You forget that I came down here just because I'd had enough of them!" I said wearily.
Elizabeth, scowling:
"We've only just finished with the eternal Harry. For a year he monopolized you; nobody else existed! Then he went, leaving you without an ounce of go or fun in you—anyhow, he did go; at last. But the very day he'd gone you got a proposal from that other Man-thing; what was his name?"