“People who saw you would know what you’re doing.”
“They know now, if they open their eyes.”
“They’d know why, I mean—that it’s war work.”
“Mercy! Nobody around here needs to be told why a person hoes potatoes these days. They’re all doing it.”
“Do you hoe potatoes?” Elliott had no notion how comically her consternation sat on her pretty features.
Laura laughed at the amazed face of her cousin. “Of course I do, when potatoes need hoeing.”
“But do you like it?”
“Oh, yes, in a way. Hoeing potatoes isn’t half bad.”
Elliott opened her lips to say that it 104 wasn’t girls’ work, remembered that she had made that remark once before, and changed to, “It is hard work, and it isn’t a bit interesting.”
Then Laura asked two questions that left Elliott gasping. “Don’t you like to do anything except what is easy? Though I don’t know that it is any harder to hoe potatoes for an hour than to play tennis that length of time. And anything is interesting, don’t you think, that has to be done?”