“I don’t see,” said Elliott, and her voice 136 choked, “I don’t see how you can bear to peel those potatoes!”
“Some one has to peel them,” said Laura. “The family must have dinner, you know. We couldn’t work without eating. Besides, I think it helps to work.”
Elliott brushed the last sentence aside. It fell outside her experience, and she didn’t understand it. The only thing she did understand was the reiteration of work, work, and the pall of blackness that overshadowed her hitherto bright world. She wished again with all her heart that she had never come to Vermont. She didn’t belong here; why couldn’t she have stayed where she did belong, where people understood her, and she them?
A great wave of homesickness swept over the girl, homesickness for the world as she had always known it, her world as it had been before the war warped and twisted and spoiled things. And yet, oddly enough, there was no sense in the 137 Cameron house of anything being spoiled. They talked of Ted Gordon in the same unbated tone of voice in which they spoke of her cousin Bob or of his friend Pete Fearing, and they actually laughed when they told stories about him. Laura baked and brewed, and the results disappeared down the road in the direction Mother Jess had taken. Aunt Jessica herself returned, a trifle pale and tired-looking, but smiling as usual.
“Lucinda and Harriet are just as brave as you would expect them to be,” Elliott heard her tell Father Bob. “No one knows yet how it happened. They hope to learn more from Ted’s friends. Two of the aviators are coming up. Harriet told me they rather look for them to-morrow night.”
Hastily Elliott betook herself out of hearing. She wanted to get beyond sight and sound of any reference to what had happened. It was the only way known to 138 her to escape the disagreeable—to turn her back on it and run away. What she didn’t see and think about, so far as she was concerned, wasn’t there. Hitherto the method had worked very well. What disquieted her now was a dull, persistent fear that it wasn’t going to work much longer.
So when Bruce remarked the next day, “I’m going to take part of the afternoon off and go for ferns; want to come?” she answered promptly, “Yes, indeed,” though privately she thought him crazy. Ferns, on a perfectly good working-day? But when they were fairly started, she found she hadn’t escaped, after all. Instead, she had run right into the thing, so to speak.
“We want to make the church look pretty,” Bruce said, as they tramped along. “And I happen to know where some beauties grow, maidenhair and the rarer sorts. It isn’t everybody I’d dare to take along.”
“Is that so?” queried the girl. She wondered why.