General agreement over this—except from the red-haired Welsh timber-girl who declared in her richest contralto:
"That wasn't love, then, for if you loved a man, it would be for ever!"
A diversity of opinions upon this, ending in a gale of laughter as Miss Easton reminded the red-haired one:
"Well, Aggie! You used to say in the woods that the birds seemed to call aloud the name of the boy one cared for! And in March you said they sang 'Dick! Deeck!' And the other day you said they were singing 'Hugh-ie! Hugh-ie!'"
Aggie, blushing down her milky, freckled throat, retorted with some allusion to some people "getting off with some fat, old, rich timber-merchant, after the war!" To which the young forewoman replied good-naturedly that she didn't mind at all the idea, of settling down with some nice, kind, elderly sort of man!
After the war, and all she'd had to do for twenty odd girls—seeing after every detail of their health, behaviour, outfit, railway vouchers, billets, stripes, rows with landladies, tests, and leaves—she would be glad enough to come in for a bit of "mothering" herself.
"Which," she concluded quaintly, "a girl gets best from a husband who isn't too young!"
Chorus of—
"Ah, bah! An old husband would be awful!"
And then Sybil, who had never travelled without a maid before the war, declared that after the war the best husbands for the girls who had been in the Land Army would be the Colonials, the Overseas men. These splendid-looking outdoor fellows could offer a girl the life—with plenty of hard work rewarded by open-air freedom, and health, and fun—which she had learnt to love.