She had been set to cross-cut sawing with a hardened "old hand." Twenty-five trees was counted a day's work. Halfway through the twenty-third she had fainted clean off. For a week she'd crept back to her billet, and had just taken her aches and blisters to bed, where she lay like a log until the next morning. Now she could stand anything—climb like a cat or run like a deer.
"I feel finer every day," she told us, smiling.
Then she told us of the others, in order of what used to be called "Social Importance." I suppose Sybil Wentworth came first. She was the country-house girl, who had only known London as the Season, the Park, Hurlingham and Henley. Her own home was lovely, Miss Easton said; there was Georgian wing and a Norman chapel, and it boasted one of those other countless bedrooms where Queen Elizabeth had passed a night.
Now Sybil's mattress was drawn up next to Lil's, who had been maid-of-all-work in one of the million villas that are too small to house and feed a servant decently, but where a servant must be kept because one is kept in bigger houses.
Among Lil's mates were a girl from Somerville, a pickle-factory hand, a student of music, and Vic the Cockney.
In every community of girls is one who will always take the lead by virtue of her vitality and initiative. Here it was Victoria Jelks, the ex-coster girl from Kentish Town, who stood out as one of the handsomest, "goeyest," and most efficient women I have met.
The forewoman took Vic's advice; Sybil deferred to her. Yet she belonged to the class that we have seen blackening Hampstead Heath on Bank Holidays, grimy and anæmic, made ugly by the life and toil of town. The country, the air, the healthy work have beautified them back into the mould that Nature meant; have given them back shapeliness and colour.
I pondered over the miracle, as I saw it now.
For these once-town girls, too, the two great drawbacks of the country did not exist. Dulness, loneliness! How could they feel lonely or bored leading this communal life all set to laughter? No wonder if they found it like the very best bits of being back at school again! With fewer restrictions, too, with what wealth of new ideas, fresh outlooks on life gained by the intermingling of class with class....
Kitchener's First Army was not more of a medley of types!