And then, to her amazement, Laura laughed and leaned over and hugged her. “And you’re a dear thing, even if you do think my hands are no lady’s!”
Of course Elliott protested; but as that was just what she did think, her protestations were not very convincing.
“You can’t have everything,” said Laura, quite as though she didn’t mind in 108 the least what her hands looked like. The strangest part of it all was that Elliott believed Laura actually didn’t mind.
But she didn’t know how to answer her, Laura’s words had raised the dust on all those comfortable cushiony notions Elliott had had sitting about in her mind for so long that she supposed they were her very own opinions. Until the dust settled she couldn’t tell what she thought, whether they belonged to her or had simply been dumped on her by other people. She couldn’t remember ever having been in such a position before.
Yes, Elliott found a good deal to think of. One had to draw the line somewhere; she had told herself comfortably; but lines seemed to be very queerly jumbled up in this war. If a person couldn’t canteen or help at a hostess house or do surgical dressings or any of the other things that had always stood in her mind for girl’s war work, she had to do what she could, 109 hadn’t she? And if it wasn’t necessary to be tagged, why, it wasn’t. Laura in blouse and short skirt, or even in overalls, seemed to accomplish as much as any possible Laura in a pantaloon suit or puttees or any other land uniform. There really didn’t seem any way out, now that Elliott understood the matter. Perhaps she had been rather dense not to understand it before.
“What would you like me to do this morning, Uncle?” she asked the next day at the breakfast-table. “I think it is time I went to work.”
“Going to join the farmerettes?”
“Thinking of it.” She could feel, without seeing, Stannard’s stare of astonishment. No one else gave signs of surprise. Stannard, thought the girl, really hadn’t as good manners as his cousins.
Uncle Bob surveyed the trim figure, arrayed in its dark smock and the shortest of all Elliott’s short skirts. If he felt other 110 than wholly serious he concealed the fact well.
“The corn needs hoeing, both field-corn and garden-corn. How about joining that squad?”