'Oh, you wouldn't understand.'
'Well, other people don't always think me a born idiot!'—Nelly would say, not without resentment. 'I really could understand, Bridget, if you'd try.'
'I haven't the time.'
'And you're killing yourself with so many hours of it. Why should you slave so? If you only would come and help me sometimes with the Red Cross work, I'd do any needlework for you, that you wanted.'
'You know I hate needlework.'
'You're not doing anything—not anything—for the war, Bridget!' Nelly would venture, wistfully, at last.
'There are plenty of people to do things for the war. I didn't want the war! Nobody asked my opinion.'
And presently the door would shut, and Nelly would be left to watch the torrents of rain outside, and to endeavour by reading and drawing, by needlework and the society of her small friend Tommy, whenever she could capture him, to get through the day. She pined for Hester, but Hester was doing Welfare work in a munition factory at Leeds, and could not be got at.
So there she sat alone, brooding and planning, too timid to talk to Bridget of her own schemes, and, in her piteous indecision, longing guiltily for Farrell's return. Meanwhile she had written to several acquaintances who were doing V.A.D. work in various voluntary hospitals, to ask for information.
Suddenly, after the rain came frost and north wind—finally snow; the beginning in the north of the fiercest winter Western Europe has known for many years. Over heights and dales alike spread the white Leveller, melting by day in the valley bottoms, and filling up his wastage by renewed falls at night. Nelly ventured out sometimes to look at the high glories of Wetherlam and the Pikes, under occasional gleams of sun. Bridget never put a foot out of doors, except when she went to the garden gate to look for the postman in the road, and take the letters from him.