Prexy, Miss Walker, was not only willing to coöperate but delighted that the students were finding a way out of the difficulty. It was a deep grief to her, this raising of prices, and she knew only too well how many girls would be cut out of their degrees by this necessary step.
Many interviews with Major Fern had to be arranged and many meetings of committees had to be held, but finally everything was under way for the agricultural club’s work on the farm so kindly donated by its delighted owner.
“By Jove, I begin to feel that I’m helping to win the war!” he declared. “I have been hating myself for a useless hulk of a veteran who was too old to fight and too old-fashioned to suggest to others how to fight, but if I can be the means of keeping a lot of girls at college I think I am doing pretty well; especially if by so doing, those girls will grow food enough for themselves. Every potato is equal to a hand grenade and every bean to a bullet.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TRENCHES
Molly and Edwin found themselves deeper in this agricultural scheme than they had at first bargained for. If it was to be done at all, it must be well done and quickly. There must be order and system. Suddenly they awoke to the realization that if it was to be well done and quickly done, it was up to them, the Greens, to do it.
“I am afraid, my dear, that you must be the chaperone and I must turn farmer. This is a stupendous undertaking and for the good name of Wellington we must see it through.”
“It will mean work all summer for you, when you so need a holiday, you poor old fellow.”
“I need no more holiday than you do. You haven’t been idle one minute this whole college year. I have a feeling that this summer we have no business with holidays anyhow. The world is too busy, too upset for any of us, who are able, to lay off. I mean to dig and delve here at home and do all the good I can.”