"I shall make a round of hospitals and do all their correspondence for them for a week. I shall come to Winston."
"That'll be lovely," said Dodo. "But what about the munition factory?"
"They say I'm too old to stand the hours, and to stand the standing. Old, indeed! Also you mayn't smoke, which is more important. One has to make the most of one's faculties, and if I couldn't smoke all day, I shouldn't be at my best. We've got to learn efficiency; we shall win when we all do our best."
They had come out of the dim arch of the station, and Dodo, helplessly giggling, sat down on a bench in the sunlight.
"That's so deliriously like you," she said. "You practically say that the war is won because you've bought a typewriter. It's the right spirit, too. I feel the Red Cross may be happy in its mind so long as I am at Winston. All the same the abstract question is interesting. I feel that the only way to laugh nowadays is to make other people laugh. And we've got to take short views, and get through the day's work, and get through to-morrow's work to-morrow. One is learning something, you know, through all this horror; I'm learning to be punctual and business-like, and not to want fifty people to look after me. We've been like babies all our lives, getting things done for us, instead of doing them ourselves. In the old days if I was going by train my maid had to come on first and take my seat, and watch by the carriage door till I arrived, and gave me my book and my rug, and the station-master had to touch his cap and hope I would be comfortable, and the footman had to shew my ticket."
An engine somewhere in the station whistled and puffed and a long train slid slowly by them and vanished into the tunnel just beyond.
"We were babies, we were drones," continued Dodo, "and we were ridiculously expensive. If a train didn't suit us, we took a special, if a new dress didn't come up to our hopes, we never saw it again. But now we wear a dress for years, and instead of taking specials we catch slow trains humbly, and travel in luggage vans. I don't think we shall ever go back to the old days, even if we had enough money left to do so."
She looked round, and a sudden misgiving dawned on her.
"Where's my train?" she said. "It ought to be standing there? What has happened?"
It was soon clear what had happened.... Half an hour later Dodo left in a special at staggering expense, in order to get down to Winston that night.