A further burning question was whether we went in uniform or in our civies?
At last Miss Easton, the young forewoman, exclaimed in mock despair:
"I shall feel as if I'd been to the blessed concert ten times over at this rate, before ever it happens! When it does come off it'll fall as flat as a committee report. Whatever did they want to send out the invitations all these days ahead for? 'Tisn't as if we'd so many engagements in this"—she gazed out of the hut window at the pastoral scene of lambs taking their evening scamper round and round a daisied meadow—"in this crowded Metropolis that we had to be booked in advance."
Peggy returned demurely:
"Ah, Miss Easton, dear, that's all you know. Some of 'em at the hospital made up their minds to let all us at the camp know in time, so that nobody should go off on short leave to see their people or anything, by mistake, on the 10th!"
Here Vic sighed stormily, rolled up her eyes in mock emotion, and remarked:
"What it is to be in love!"
The usual laugh went round as at the least of Vic's utterances. Then the talk turned upon the love-affairs of the Campites present. We were given the probable date of Peggy's wedding with her Syd in the autumn. We were told of the disgraceful fickleness of Curley, the straight-haired brunette, who had been engaged to a young gentleman in the Tank Corps, who had shown her photograph to a friend of his, who had taken an enormous fancy to it, and had written to Curley who had broken off the engagement with her first love, and who had been walking out, by letter, with the friend ever since.
"I'm astonished at her," Peggy said severely.
"What's the good of being astonished at anything in war-time?" retorted Curley. "And what's the good of going on writing to a fellow when you are sick and tired of the sight of him before ever he goes to France? Better sense to break it off in time, and see if you like the next one better when he comes home!"