It was only on the morning of the second day that she found courage to face life as it was. The home in London in which she had been given royal welcome was gone. She could barely whisper. Would her voice come back? What of her people there in the subway? The little Irish girl, the Scotch fiddler, and all the rest, were they carrying on?
“Yes,” she assured herself as a fresh glow of hope overflowed her being, “They are right there doing their bit.”
Breakfast over, with Flash at her heels, she once again led her small flock of sheep out to the frostbitten, sunlit pasture. There, after spreading a blanket on a rock, she lay for a long time staring up at the sun. It seemed to her, at that moment, that all that terrible war was but a bad dream, that it never had happened, that all the world was as much at peace as was her sunny pasture.
The drone of airplane motors, followed by machine-guns tearing at the sky drove this illusion from her mind. The war was real, terribly real. It must be faced with eyes open and mind alert.
It was there on the rock that her brother found her. “So they drove you out of London? The dirty Huns!” he exclaimed, dropping to a seat beside her. “Cherry!” There were lines of fierce determination in his face, “I’m going to join up with the Royal Air Force.”
For a full minute she made no reply, just sat staring at the cloudless sky. Perhaps she was thinking of the good times they had had together, fishing and swimming in summer, tobogganing and skiing in winter. And on rainy days there had been games before the open fire.
“Yes,” she whispered at last, as color flooded back into her face, “you must join up, Brand. Everyone must. Those marvelous people, the women, the children must come out of the subway. They must sleep again in their own homes in peace.”
“I—I’m glad you feel that way.” Brand swallowed hard. “That—that’s going to make it easier. You and I have been pals, Cherry, all these years.
“I’ll tell you,” his voice picked up. “It’s a great secret. We’ve been training, Dave and I, training for two weeks. Training like everything.”
“D—Dave,” she whispered. “Why! He’s an American! This is not his war.”