“I think we ought to rent the Orchard Home for the summer, don’t you?” asked Molly, turning her head away so her husband could not see what it cost her to make that suggestion.
“Why, Molly honey, I can’t bear to think of it. It is hard enough on you not to be able to go to Kentucky for vacation, but I don’t think you should have to think of strangers as being among your apple trees.”
“It won’t be bad, not nearly so bad as you think. At least, the little brown bungalow won’t be quite so lonesome as it would be empty all the year, and we might buy tons of seed with the rent money or even take care of some war orphans.”
“I guess you are right,—you usually are. I’ll write to a real estate agent in Louisville immediately and put it on the market for the summer. I hate to do it, though. Not that it will make so much difference to me. Wherever you are is my Orchard Home, honey!”
The Major’s farm was dubbed “The Trenches” by the members of the agricultural club. It was a suitable name, for these girls felt that they were in the war almost as much as the soldier boys themselves.
Early in May Molly moved to the old farmhouse to superintend arrangements for the many girls later to be housed there. It was decided to run the place more or less as a military camp is run, with squads detailed for various duties.
“Only our trench digging will be in the potato fields and our drilling in the bean patch,” Billie declared.
Billie was in a state of ecstasy from the first. She was General Molly’s aide-de-camp, giving time, money, and thought to the undertaking.
“It is so splendid really to be helping! I wanted to do something to help the Government and now I believe I am going to. I should like best to shoulder a gun and take a crack at the Huns, but since that cannot be, I’ll shoulder a pick and take a crack at the soil.”
Billie, whose post-graduate studies at Wellington were not very important, had cut and gone to The Trenches with Molly. They had installed themselves in a corner of the rambling old farmhouse and were as busy as bees getting ready for the thirty girls who were to land on them the last week in May. Katy and the two children were with them, but Kizzie had been left in Wellington to look after the master, who was up to his neck in work for the finals at college.