Tired? She should think she was tired! And she had fully intended to go with Stan. Then why hadn’t she gone? The question puzzled the girl. Quit when you like and make it up with cajolery was a motto that Elliott had found very useful. She was good at cajolery. What made her hesitate to try it now?
She swung around, half minded to call Stannard back, when a sentence flashed into her mind, not a whole sentence, just a fragment salvaged from a book some one had once been reading in her hearing: “This war will be won by tired men who—” She couldn’t quite get the rest. An impression persisted of keeping everlastingly at it, but the words escaped her. She swung back, her hail unsent. Well, she was tired, dead tired, and her back was broken and her hands were blistered, or going to be, but nobody would think of saying that that had anything to do with winning the war. Stay; wouldn’t they? 117 It seemed absurd; but, still, what made people harp so on food if there weren’t something in it? If all they said was true, why—and Elliott’s tired back straightened—why, she was helping a little bit; or she would be if she didn’t quit.
It may seem absurd that it had taken a backache to make Elliott visualize what her cousins were really doing on their farm. She ought, of course, to have been able to see it quite clearly while she sat on the veranda, but that isn’t always the way things work. Now she seemed to see the farm as part of a great fourth line of defense, a trench that was feeding all the other trenches and all the armies in the open and all the people behind the armies, a line whose success was indispensable to victory, whose defeat would spell failure everywhere. It was only for a minute that she saw this quite clearly, with a kind of illuminated insight that made her backache well worth while. Then the minute 118 passed, and as Elliott bent to her hoe again she was aware only of a suspicion that possibly when one was having the most fun was not always when one was being the most useful.
“Well,” said a pleasant voice, “how does the hoeing go?”
And there stood Laura with a pitcher in her hand, and on her face a look—was it of mingled surprise and respect?
“You mustn’t work too long the first day,” she told Elliott. “You’re not hardened to it yet, as we are. Take a rest now and try it again later on. I have your book under my arm.”
When, that noon, they all trooped up to the house, hot and hungry, Elliott went with them, hot and hungry, too. Nobody thanked her for anything, and she didn’t even notice the lack. Farming wasn’t like canteening, where one expected thanks. As she scrubbed her hands she noticed that her nails were hopeless, but her attention 119 failed to concentrate on their demoralized state. Hadn’t she finished her row?
“Stuck it out, did you?” said Bruce, as they sat down at dinner. “I bet you would.”
“I shouldn’t have dared look any of you in the face again, if I hadn’t,” smiled Elliott. But his words rang warm in her ears.