“Oh, of course scribblers will scribble and anyone who has a message to deliver will have to spout it out, war time or not, but they may not think they are so all-fired important. A letter from the most ignorant soldier at the front will have more real stuff in it than all of the vaporings of the poet who only imagines gunfire.”
“And here far from the strife——”
“Here we will make sonnets with hoe and rake!”
“Our lines made by the gasoline plough shall be beautiful and harmonious!” suggested Molly.
“Our onion patch shall be worthy to be put into verse along with Eugene Field’s Onion Tart,” said Billie, going Molly one better.
“Our potato field shall be as full of solid refreshment as Charles Dudley Warner’s five feet of classics. Only smell the newly-ploughed earth! Isn’t it delicious?”
The wagons were unloaded, the farming implements piled neatly in the tool house and the Close-to-Nature houses dotted about the lawn ready for the stupendous task of being put up. The girls were waiting for Katy, whom they had dubbed “the powerful Katrinka,” to come help them with that job. Katy was in her element. She had been born and raised in the country, and now that she was once more where things were growing, where she could help them grow, she was as happy an Irish girl as there was in all the land. Nothing was too difficult for her to do and her great strength helped Molly and Billie out of many a quagmire of work that seemed too heavy for them to accomplish without masculine aid.
“And now Oi’m ready for to help put oop the little play houses,” she said as she joined Molly and Billie.
“That’s fine,” said her mistress, “but before we begin, just let’s smell the ploughed ground a little. Don’t you love it, Katy?”
“Sure! And it beats the perfumery that comes in a bottle, to my moind,” said the girl, sniffing delightedly.