"Yes, I quite see," said I.
Three excuses for talking, from a young man whom she only called "He"!
"So he wrote to me. I promised I'd see him for a minute after tea tonight."
"Oh, yes. When did you promise that?" slipped from me before I knew.
Elizabeth gave her mattress a little kick as she lugged it out.
"I met him on the road the other day," she said in the tone of one who shakes a fist at the world—what it is to have to live up to the name of Man-hater!—and added: "You needn't think there's any nonsense of that sort about it!"
"I never said there was," mildly from me.
"You're always ready to think it!" tigerishly from her. "So I thought I'd just tell you, to stop your getting any wrong impression!"
"Righto!" said I, pacifically. "I won't think anything about it, old thing."
Elizabeth gave a queer little sigh—was it of gratitude?—as she spread her blankets.
Whether she was just annoyed at the possibility of my thinking she had taken a fancy to a mere man who admired her, or whether she really had begun to take a fancy—well, I gave it up as I settled down to my well-earned rest.
I'd said I wouldn't think any more about it. As a matter of fact I was too stunned by the extraordinary possibilities of the subject. I left it. I turned to the thought of Captain Holiday's other guest for that concert, that girl from town who was coming to stay with her mother at the Lodge.
I found myself wondering over her again during the few minutes that elapsed between my curling up on my mattress and my losing consciousness of that and every other question.
It was all very well for that young man to announce so succinctly, "She's just the girl I want." What did he think that would convey to me? She would be rather lucky, as luck goes, to have any one so nice and amusing in love with her. But what sort of a girl would a man like that want?
Absolutely no frills about her, I decided. She would be extraordinarily practical and efficient; very out of doorish; good-looking, but not pretty in any "doll-y" sort of way; thorough sportswoman—only, why hadn't she wanted to say either "yes" or "no" to him? Why not "yes" at once? Why not——
Here a curious little incident wound up a day of curious incidents. I had, whilst engaged in these meditations, been tucking my wrist watch under the rolled-up scarf that was my only pillow. My hand met a handkerchief that I had forgotten was there. As I took hold of the thing I felt a knot that was tied tightly in the corner of it.
A knot to remind me of something.
Now what was that, and when had I tied it?
Suddenly I remembered.
Elizabeth had tied that knot in my green silk handkerchief days and days ago. And she'd said: "That's to remind you to think mournfully of Harry at least once a day."
I'd forgotten that. More than that, I'd forgotten Harry for the moment—or for how long? Had it really been days since I had given a thought to those bitter-sweet memories of the man who used to blot out every other interest from my horizon? Had the land-work cure progressed so rapidly that other interests were beginning to keep all remembrance of Harry in the background?
I looked back to the obsession that had been the indirect cause of sending me—a love-sick wreck!—on to the land.
And now—was it possible that I'd got over it so well?
In ruefulness, relief, and surprise I drew a deep breath. Then I turned over and slept.
But I never dreamt of what else was coming to remind me of Harry—and very shortly!
"Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il faut aimer ce qu'on a."—FRENCH PHILOSOPHER.
A few days after I had been wondering what Captain Holiday's "the" girl would be like, my curiosity was gratified.
I met her!
This was how it occurred:
I was out in "the town" shopping—fascinating occupation—don't any woman's eyes brighten at its name?
Yes.... But the chances are ten to one against her knowing anything about the Careg Land Girl's Camp version of the function.
Not for us the dear delights of window-gazing, of comparing prices and textures in one big, temptingly set-out establishment after another.... Well, we got our delight in another way.
Shopping for the girls was a game of chance and skill, I can tell you. It "combined all the charm of novelty with that of big game-hunting!" as Vic put it. It meant diving into the funniest little caves of shops, all garlanded by festoons of such different kinds of goods as picture post-cards, hanks of darning cotton, and onions.
It sometimes included vaulting over the counter ourselves, and helping dear old ladies to forage for what we wanted in a wilderness of cardboard boxes at the back of the shop. And even after our search it generally meant that we went on our way disappointed, to the accompaniment of such remarks as "No, indeed, I'm very sorry! I'm sold out of every bit"—of whatever it was we wanted—"and I don't know when I shall ever see any! It's the war, yes, yes! I haven't got a ha'porth of nothing of the sort, not in the whole place!"
This seemed to be the keynote of supplies in the town, late on that very wet Saturday afternoon when I had accompanied Vic, and Peggy, the tiny Timber-girl, to do the shopping for the rest of our camp.
"Got the list, Celery-face?" said Vic. As we sheltered for a moment in an archway I pulled out the long list of commissions which our colleagues had drawn up for us.
Optimists! They really thought we could get these things for them in "the town"!
I read aloud.
"Last two numbers ofThe Tatler." (I expect the latest number they've got at the station here is April 1, Nineteen Five.)
"Pot of lemon-marmalade; you could get it at Morris's. (I don't think.)
"Sybil wants jasmine soap, 1s. 3d." (Why not the moon?)
"Two skeins of floss embroidery silk, deep cream or nearest." (The nearest is Regent Street, I expect.)
"Reel of black cotton, No. 40, packet needles, No. 9's, brown shoe-laces, broad." (All asked for, and none to be had.)
"Shocking!" was Vic's cheery verdict. "As for the packets of grey square envelopes for Miss Easton, nothing doing—and there was I pinning my faith to them having a good line in salvage stock left over from the Ark, this being the last place where the Flood stopped—not that it ever has really stopped in Wales, if you ask me."
"Oh, that eternal joke about the weather in Wales!" I laughed. "Just as if it didn't rain much harder in plenty of other places! Have you ever stayed in Surrey, by the way?That'swhere it never leaves off!"
"It 'ud have a job to beat this beauty-spot today," persisted Vic, winking the rain from her lashes. "Look at it!"
It certainly was a soaking wet afternoon, Wales running Surrey a good second for once.
For it certainly was a soaking wet afternoon! The clouds were a blanket of indigo, from which the rain poured in millions of white streams, hissing on to the narrow, little, slate-paved street, all shiny with puddles. Tossing the drops from the brim of my Land Army hat, I went on reading the list of ordinary every-day things which we Land Girls in the damp depths of that wilderness found as hard to come by as gold!
I read.
"'Gramophone needles.' (No earthly.)
"'Dri-ped for Curley's boots. (No.) 'Tin of toffee.' (No.) 'Sticking-plaister.' (No.) 'Oranges.' (What are they?) 'Writing-pad.' (Bagged the last.) 'Shampoo-powder, any decent sort that smells nice——'"
"Aha. Who's wanting to make her hair smell nice all of a sudden?" demanded Peggy with interest. "I'm astonished at her! Who is it?"
"Don't know," I fibbed valiantly—for I knew perfectly. It was young Elizabeth who had begun to want to minister to that thick, soft hair-crop of hers in this way.... A sign of the times! That fixed it, surely? I exchanged a soulful though still half-credulous glance with the nearest cottage-window, blank with rain.
"I haven't tried Mr. Lloyd, the only chemist's, for that yet," I went on. "Shall we go on and see if he's ever heard of such a thing?"
Cramming the list into my pocket, we set out again down that river of a street.
The chemist's shop was at the other end of it.
And as we splashed down the street we had a little adventure of the kind that had probably occurred to more than one set of land girls.
A group of lads who encountered us began to laugh and jeer at our uniform—they themselves were in "civvies," mackintosh and caps. Farmers' lads from remote places in the mountains!
I don't know what they said, but from the tone it was obviously not complimentary.
So feeling that blank discomfort which falls upon the average girl at any man's incivility, I found myself clutching Peggy's arm in order to hurry past, and saying hastily: "Come on, Vic——"
But Vic, to my horror, had paused.
She left my side. She took a step towards the nearest of the lads, a rosy-faced nineteen-year-old with a ragged thatch of black hair showing under his bowler hat. There she stood, firmly planted on the streaming road, handsome head well up in the rain, figure held proudly erect, and she demanded in a voice that rang:
"What's that you're saying about us?" A sheepish giggle from the group; not one of the boys spoke.
"You were saying we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, wasn't it? Something like that, eh? That's what you think of us, is it?" Vic went on.
"I'd like just to tell you what we Land Army girls think of you!" Vic announced. "And that is, that it's you who ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Huh! Why aren't you in France? Can't leave the farm, you can't. You're sheltering yourselves behind the land, you are. You ought to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest o' the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
"You've got regiments. Nobody can say they don't fight all right. Yet here you are at home. Exemption, eh? Indispensables—I don't think. Who's to milk father's cows? Well, we've volunteered to do that. That's what we're here for. That's why you can't bear to see us about the place. You're afraid——"
Mutters from the boys here.
"Yes, you're afraid that when it's shown that we girls can do most o' your work you'll be pushed out after all!" went on the relentless Vic. "So you try and bring a bad name on the Land Army, you little blighters, who take jolly good care you aren't in any army at all! You make game of our uniform, you that haven't a suit o' khaki among the lot of you! Nice ones you are to talk!"
Here there was an uneasy movement in the enemy's ranks.
Skulking little wretches! There are some of these in every place, town or country—the dregs of a noble race whose cream was taken first of all. Probably as soon as our backs were turned they would have wheeled round and begun to shout after us again. But this Vic did not mean to allow. She kept her face turned squarely on the retreat.
She called out after them:
"Making fun, were you, because we girls wear the breeches? A good job for the country that we do! As for you, it's a pity they can't take and make you," raising her voice to a shout, "wear petticoats!"
They were now out of ear-shot, so she turned, flushed and triumphant.
"I'm astonished at you," Peggy launched her favourite dictum reproachfully, as we plodded on in the wet. "I wouldn't stoop to answer back a lot of louts like that. I wouldn't speak to 'em."
"Daresay you wouldn't," retorted Vic, good-humouredly, "but if we were all as jolly dignified as you and Celery-face here, those Cuthberts would go through the rest of their natch never knowing what a decent girl thought of 'em! So I thought I might as well demean myself to tell them off proper just for once in a way!"
With which conclusion we found ourselves just outside the tiny chemist's shop. A dog-cart was drawn up there—little did I suspect at that moment who had driven in it! I only noticed that it was occupied by a little stable-boy who did odd jobs about the Lodge for Captain Holiday.
Well, in we all three clumped to the shop with coloured globes and show-cards and dangling bunches of "baby's-comforters" and sponges of Victorian date. And here there met our astonished eyes that figure that was so utterly and entirely uncharacteristic of "the town," or of anything at all in the country round about it!
It was a girl, in an ultra-smart, white and black rubber rain-coat, with a small black and white rain-hat set at an indescribably French angle on her head. Our first glimpse of her, as she stood with her back to us and her face to the obviously paralysed little Welsh chemist, gave us the impression of some slim and elegant magpie who had flown in there to shelter from the rain.
She was speaking. Her high-pitched, clear drawl seemed to belong to Bond Street.
"But d'you mean to say you don't keep any of Roget et Collet's things?"
Then, as we Land girls came clumping and dripping in, she turned with a little stare that seemed to say, "What figures of fun have we here?"
Our rainy-day kit is scarcely dainty. That brown Board of Agriculture mackintosh with the flappy cape-sleeves seemed to amuse the pretty townified girl.
Ravishingly pretty she was in her small-mouthed, big-eyed, Lily-Elsie style with an authentic curl twisting in front of her pink ear, and eyelashes to which the rain-drops hung. How perfectly suited, too, by the costly simple "rightness" of her clothes. Girl and "get-up" composed a type one would scarcely have expected to see here.
The last person I expected to see—for I had seen her before!
With my second good hard look at this fashionable vision I recognized her.
"Hul-lo! You here? It is you, isn't it!" I exclaimed.
She opened her eyes at me, while Peggy and Vic stood by in amazement that this chic magpie apparition should be known to me.
I hadn't been mistaken, even though I could not imagine what should bring her here of all places in the world. It was she all right.
It was Muriel Elvey, the girl who had taken Harry from me!
Muriel opened her big eyes even more widely upon me.
"Good gracious! Is it? Yes, it's Joan Matthews! How priceless!" she exclaimed in that pretty drawl of hers. She glanced from me to the other two Land Girls and back again. "Of course! How d'you do?"
Here she extended her small, perfectly-gloved hand towards my sunburnt paw, that I saw for the first time was irremediably roughened by farm work.
I saw that Miss Muriel took in this and every other detail of my appearance, while she went on gaily:
"Isn't this too funny? The last person I'd ever dreamt of seeing! Of course, I'd heard you'd gone on the land, Joan, or something quaint like that——"
"Why 'quaint'?" thought I, while the same thought showed on the faces of my two mates.
"But I didn't know at all which bit of 'the land' it was supposed to be," concluded Muriel. "Isn't it appallingly hard work? Can you stand it? It would kill me," she went on. She always could chatter nineteen to anybody else's dozen. "I get fearfully done up, with my own war work."
"I didn't know you did any."
"Oh, dear, yes. I go round to no end of hospitals in town and play the piano to the men. They adore it," declared Muriel. "Only the nurses are such cats! Women never can be decent to me, somehow I had a fiendish row with one ward-sister—all jealousy on her part, of course. I simply came away. But what a place to come away to, isn't it?" She gave a tiny grimace about the musty village shop, and towards the glimpse of streaming wilderness outside. "And imagine my meeting you here!"
I spoke up.
"Well, but imagine meeting you! I thought you were never to be seen away from London or some civilized seaside town? What brings you to Careg?"
For even yet the whole situation hadn't broken upon me. Only, I was sore and ruffled, and utterly upset by this meeting with Muriel.
It was opening an old wound. I'd thought I'd forgotten. But, brought face to face with this girl for whom Harry had left me before he sailed, my heart throbbed as painfully as it had on that ghastly morning when I'd got that note to say he'd gone.
Now I wondered with a stab if she were actually engaged to him? I hadn't heard that she was.
She, the unexpected one, gave a pleased little laugh.
"What brought me to Wales?" Muriel replied. "You may well ask, my dear. I was positively dragged down here. Pestered out of my life to come! By a man, of course. No!"—laughing again—"you needn't look as if you thought it must be a romance. He is merely a cousin. My cousin Dick Holiday——"
"What—?" I echoed, thoroughly petrified by this. Her cousin? He was Muriel's cousin? He, who had been talking to me of "the" girl—and who had allowed me to leap to the conclusion that she and the girl-cousin who was coming down to stay were one and the same person! Violently I had leapt to that conclusion. Quite violently, in my haste, I thought now:
"Oh! The man-snatcher! She took my Harry. Now she's annexed Captain Holiday. She takes everybody!"
"I promised him I'd come down with mother and play the piano for his soldiers and things at some priceless concert or other that he's giving," Muriel Elvey went on. "His big place down here is turned into a hospital, you know. That is," with a glance at my muddy boots and uniform, "I don't suppose you've met him, of course, but he's——"
"What, Captain Holiday?" Vic broke in, unaddressed and heartily. "Not met the gent what's giving the concert? Met him? Huh! I should shay sho!"
Muriel, with an indescribable stiffening of her pretty, well-turned-out figure, stared up at the big Cockney Land Girl who thus accosted her.
Vic leaned against the counter, beaming. She might have stood for the symbolical figure of Young Democracy, gazing tolerantly down upon costly Convention.
"All us girls'll be turning up at Captain Holiday's concert," Vic told her. "It's going to be some beano, I give you my word. So you're going to oblige, too, are you? See you then!" She gave a little nod, and turned to the chemist who had been listening with the concentration of a male gossip to every syllable of this conversation.
"Now, Mr. Lloyd! What about this shampoo powder we've heard so much about? ... What's in that box, there, to the right? ... There we are! Egg and lemon—and very nice, too. Sixpence? Right! Good-bye-e-e-e!"
Vic marshalled us out of the shop with a friendly grin divided between the chemist and Muriel Elvey, who was left standing there—utterly pole-axed, I am sure by this glimpse of the sort of companionship into which one was launched when one joined the Land Army.
I could see that she found Vic "too impossible for words!"
This hurt me for my messmate and pal, though I am convinced Vic knew little and cared less about the fact that she had just been looked upon as a young female hooligan! I tramped back along the "puddlesome" roads to camp in a state of mind that I had not known since I'd shaken the dust of London off my feet in the spring.
Still "minding" so dreadfully about Muriel Elvey and Harry?
Why be surprised because men fell like ninepins before her expensively-shod feet? Yet I was astonished. Not at Harry. At that other man for whom she was "the" girl—or so I'd convinced myself.
Surely, though, Captain Holiday should have been the exception to the rule that men adore the Muriel type?
Yes; I'd made up mental pictures of this girl of whom he'd talked without mentioning her name.
To think that the girl he wanted could be a Muriel!
She was the girl of whom one couldn't think without setting her in the background of restaurant-lights, hothouse flowers and Bond Street dressmakers.
When one saw Muriel, one saw always her "things": Muriel and her pearl-string; Muriel and her gold-mesh purse with tiny powder-box and lip-stick attached; Muriel and her mauve leather dressing-case; Muriel and her ivory manicure-set.
Each was a lure, each was a mesh of the net for a man like my lost admirer Harry.... His people were now exceedingly well-off, but there had been no luxury in his boyhood, which, as he'd told me, had been passed in a bleak little house behind the shop where the money had been made, penny by penny, to give him his chance.
At twenty-five, luxury was still rather a new delight to him. He could not take it for granted, poor darling; he who had never seen his mother with any "pretty" things of her own. Hence the reaction. He loved a woman to have "possessions." He adored her to "fuss" incessantly about her nails and skin and hair.
But Captain Holiday, I thought, liked such different things!
Him one couldn't think of without a background of out-of-doors; woods, mountain, field—and perhaps a manure-heap with a Land Girl working there.
And now (so I persuaded myself) he had become infatuated with and wanted to marry a boudoir-type of girl, who hated to go out in a wind!
Ah, the tricks that are played by the charm of Contrast! ... and why should I feel sore about them?
At last the great day of the long-discussed Concert arrived.
At last the burning question was decided whether we Campites were to attend in uniform or "civvies."
Popular opinion had been in favour of Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Some girls had wired home to hasten their parcels. The red-haired Welsh timber-girl had been all delight over the prospect of adorning herself in a blouse of rose-pink voile with flowers embroidered in coarse white cotton. How entirely it spoilt her looks! In fact, there was scarcely a girl in that camp who didn't look a thousand times more attractive in uniform than she did in an ordinary hat and frock.
Uniform does manage to be always "right" in a way that only the most successful "other clothes" ever achieve. But only one woman in twenty can ever be persuaded to see that.
Elizabeth and I were highly pleased, however, when the verdict came from the forewoman that uniform was to be worn at the concert after all.
That concert began early, in order to finish early. We should never have time to get back from work, have our tea, and change into civilian clothes before we set out again for the hospital—particularly the gang of timber-workers, who were now in the woods, two miles beyond the training farm. And it wouldn't look nice to have them in uniform and the farm-girls out of it. We must be all alike, decided Miss Easton, and smarten up our working kit by getting into a clean smock and giving our boots an extra polish.
Grumbling broke out—what camp in either the women's or the men's armies could go on without its grouse? But the girls agreed to lump it, as it had to be.
"After all, the boys'll have to be in their everlasting hospital blue, with those chronic red ties o' theirs that I'm getting fair fed up with the sight of, so we'll be fellow-sufferers in distress," pronounced Vic cheerfully as she swallowed her tea, left the table, and then got to work on another pair of brogues.
"After you with that brown boot-polish, young Mop"—to Elizabeth—"and when you've finished with the glass, Peggy, p'raps you'll find me a clean handkerchief, the thieves in this place having pinched the lot of mine. Ho! Why do I talk in this unfemin-nine style? Most unwomanly I call it. Effects of this here life in camp," she rattled on good-humouredly.
"I shall have to mind myself presently, before that refined pal of Celery-face's. Her what's going to play the piano. She didn't half give me a nasty look in the chemist's. Sure she thinks I'm no lady. Now what's her little game? Is she trying to get off with the Captain, Celery-face?"
I said a trifle bitterly:
"If she likes people, she does not have to 'try' for them."
"Ah, is she one o' those lucky ones," said Vic, cheerfully shining her brogues. "Well, I'm going to watch the young lady tonight, and see what she makes of——"
"Hurry up, you girls!" urged Miss Easton from the porch. "The concert starts at a quarter to. It's time we were off!"
* * * * * * *
Well! As Vic said, we were to "see life" that evening at the concert.
The scene was that big comfortable country house transformed into that jolly hospital for the boys from the Front. Its enormous double drawing-room must have witnessed plenty of "county" dinner-parties; dull and formal functions, no doubt. Nothing dull or formal about tonight, now that it was turned into an impromptu music-hall!
The wounded lads buzzed about it like a swarm of blue bees giving an At Home, welcoming the visitors, showing them into the rows of seats set in the lower half of the room.
"Here you are! Land Army to the right!" a cheery voice hailed us as we trooped in—twenty-odd girls in uniform.
It was Peggy's sergeant who greeted us. His hair was varnished brighter than the parquet floor; he wore the largest rose I have ever seen in his button-hole, and the gaudiest lucky golliwog decorated his red tie.
"I was to reserve these seats for you young ladies. The best, of course!" he beamed upon us. "Stalls this way, if you please. Peggy, you sit at the end of the row so that you can pop out quick in the interval."
"I'm astonished at you," came a Timber-girl's retort as we settled into our seats and looked about the bright, crowded place.
The farther end was occupied by the stage platform with the piano set near the wings. A curtain had been made of what looked like all the spare quilts in the house.
Standing in front of this (as I saw directly we came in) was our host, Captain Holiday.
Evening-dress made him taller and different, both from the smart soldier he was in khaki and the country sportsman he seemed in those dilapidated tweeds of his. Suddenly he seemed a stranger again to me. It chilled me.
He was talking to one of the soldiers, a red-haired Blue Boy, with a good-looking, clean-cut, actor-ish face. I heard Captain Holiday saying:
"Righto! I'll tell the Colonel to let you fix him up. That's in the second part."
"Yes, sir," said the red-haired boy.
Captain Holiday, looking down the room caught sight of our party. I heard him give an "Ah." He smiled, nodding at me. This was somehow cheering after that slight chill. He made a movement forward, I think—I'm sure he was coming to speak to me.
But at that moment a pretty, coquettish voice called "Dick!"
And there entered, by a door nearer the stage, Muriel Elvey and her mother. Mrs. Elvey, the sort of mother who never is anything but an adequate "background" to her daughters, looked placid and pleased in well-fitting black, with diamonds.
As for Muriel, she was lovely, yes, lovely! in her Frenchiest little frock of pinks and mauves, and mingled heliotropes. The girlish, low-cut bodice of it had no sleeves, and was held up over her white shoulders by strings of palest coral beads. She was a vision such as Careg had never seen. No wonder the Blue Boys gazed! No wonder the Land Girls, in their clean but coarse overalls, bent forward and studied her with the rapturous, envying sighs they would have heaved over some exquisite fashion-plate! No wonder that she was followed by a slim masculine shape in black-and-white that was Colonel Fielding.
He, too! No wonder, indeed, that her cousin, Captain Holiday, was at Muriel's side in an instant, bending his dark head over her golden one, with its fillet of coral-pink buds.
Now, curiously enough perhaps, that sight spoilt the whole first part of the concert for me.
At first I didn't know why. Such was my incredible self-deception that I gave myself quite the wrong reason for the fact that Muriel Elvey came between me and any enjoyment of the playlet "Poached Eggs and Pearls," excellently acted by a company of nurses and wounded. I was beset, I told myself, by the promptings of jealous memory.
I pictured that golden, rose-filleted head of Muriel's close to another dark head. Harry's! That was what I couldn't help thinking of. I watched Muriel—the centre of all eyes as she sat at the piano—and I realized what she'd meant to Harry. Not a thought had he had for me after that evening when I introduced him to her. And now history was repeating itself. Now Captain Holiday hadn't a look for anybody else.
It hurt.
Oh! Not the Captain Holiday part, of course! I assured myself hastily—the other. I'd thought I was getting over that. How queer are the workings of that most painful passion—jealousy! Brooding, I sat there with my mates, enjoying themselves on each side of me. I laughed with the others, with the others I watched the stage, and clapped when the curtain fell—to Muriel's music—for the end of the first part.
Then Captain Holiday, still standing by Muriel at the piano, called out:
"There will now be an interval of fifteen minutes! War-time refreshments will be found in the dining-room."
So, with a scraping aside of chairs and a babel of voices, the audience surged out of the "theatre." I went with the others. But that black mood of mine had swept my mind away out of my new and joyous country life, back to the bad old days of London after Harry left.
I sat on a big chair near the door, and watched.
Each Land Girl had found a wounded soldier or two to attend to her. Vic, with Elizabeth under her wing, was the centre of a group of blue. Then a long glass of lemonade was brought to me by the pleasant-faced, red-haired lad I had noticed with Captain Holiday. He talked to me in a gentle, but curious, voice, husky, yet high-pitched. For he told me he'd been shot through the lungs.
"Done me in for the profession if I go back after the war," he said cheerfully. "Spoilt my singing voice." He told me he'd been on the stage from the time he was ten until he joined the Army in 1914.
Here Sergeant Syd, coming up to us with an arm through Peggy's, broke into the conversation.
"Yes, and you'd have been all right, you silly blighter, if you'd have stayed where they wanted to keep you, down at the base singing to the boys in rest camp. You needn't ever have left there! But no. He would go up the line, Miss."
The red-haired actor warrior agreed in the husky voice that was spoilt for song:
"I wanted to go up the line. After all, I didn't join to go on singing."
Another aspect of life: the obscurely heroic that is taken for granted every day!
"Corporal Ferrant," said a voice at his elbow. It was Muriel again.
"Oh, will you go to the Colonel's room now?" she said pleasantly. "He's ready for you to make him up." Then:
"Hullo, Joan!" she said. "What do you think of this priceless show? My hands are dropping off with playing so hard."
She glanced around. Then she let herself down lightly on the arm of my chair as if she wanted to say something particular to me.
"I say," she said, with a sudden little shrewd glance at me. "Wasn't it funny about Harry Markham?"
"Funny?" I echoed, startled. "What—which was funny?"
Muriel, adjusting her pink shoulder strap, answered:
"Oh, just his getting brought back to Blighty again after he'd had only three weeks in Salonika!"
Harry? In England? The first I'd heard of it. Yes; naturally she'd know and I shouldn't. But it was bitter!
"Apparently the General can't do without him," she went on. "I expect Harry's jolly glad to get back to London. I had a note this morning from him; forwarded. Of course he tore up to see me as soon as he arrived."
"Of course he would!" said I, with quite a successful laugh.
Muriel, watching my face, said:
"I expect you know I saw a lot of him after that night you introduced him at 'Romance'——"
"Oh, I knew." Didn't I! I nodded quite cheerfully at this pretty, prosperous girl who had written that letter to me in the spring.
Through the confused chatter of the crowded room Muriel spoke confidentially.
"He—— Well, between ourselves, he went absolutely mad about me, you know. Proposed and proposed——"
"Really," said I, with another composed nod. Every word drove straight into my heart. Harry had proposed. Several times! Were they actually engaged, then?
I was too proud to ask, but how I wanted to know!
"He's quite nice," Muriel remarked critically. "Quite good-looking. Quite amusing to go out with. One enjoyed Harry's taking one out. But marrying him might be another matter; because——"
Here she stopped. The stage-bell was ringing. People began to scramble past us out of the room.
"I must go," cried Muriel. "The second part's beginning now."
But I held on to an end of her mauve sash.
"Wait——!" I said.
I felt I must know about Harry. "Because," she said—and stopped. Did it mean because she meant to marry her cousin? I simply must find out, for Captain Holiday's sake. Remember, I still believed she must be the girl of whom he'd told me "she hasn't said 'Yes' or 'No' to me yet." She must mean "Yes," I thought excitedly.
I kept close to her as we moved out of the doorway.
"Do tell me, Muriel," I urged, "what you were going to!"
She laughed, enjoying her power to tease.
"Oh, you want to know if I am going to be engaged to Harry or not?"
"You said 'not.'"
"No, I didn't. I simply said marrying him might—only 'might'—be another matter."
"Yes, yes," I agreed hurriedly, "but why?"
Muriel's answer was not one I should have dreamt of hearing from her.
Tilting her fair head, she smiled over her white shoulder and said:
"Oh, well! Because, after all, he isn't a gentleman, is he?"
This remark was a shock to me.
Harry Markham—"not a gentleman—" To hear Muriel say it!
Just because Harry's father, that self-made man, hadn't "made" himself in time to send his son to a public school? Didn't that seem rather like ... well, hideous snobbery?
Further, for a girl to let a man take her out to the theatre, the opera—for her to accept innumerable dinners and taxi-drives from him, and then for her to sum him up to another girl as "not a gentleman"—didn't it sound like ... to put it kindly, ill-breeding?
It surprised me so from Muriel because after all she was a lady!
But——
Would any girl who was a gentlewoman at heart have been guilty of such a remark?
And did Captain Holiday, who also—as I believed—wanted to marry Muriel—did he know that she was the sort of girl who would say such a thing?
I was resentfully wondering over that as the pink and mauve figure of Muriel slipped back to her seat at the piano. I returned to my chair next to Sybil, and the second part of the soldiers' concert began.
Now the opening item was a clog-dance by a merry-faced, one-armed Lancashire Fusilier. It was good; but I could not fix any attention on the stage just then.
Was Muriel going to marry Captain Holiday, who had now drawn up a chair close beside hers at the piano? Or did she mean after all to take Harry? Which? Which? Did she know herself, yet?
And—here an odd thought came to me as those clogs pattered faster than a shower of summer rain—did I myself know which of those two young men I least wanted Muriel to marry?
"Clicketty clicketty clack clack!" went the clogs on the stage; I watched, with the others, while the light twinkling feet within them danced on and on.
I was thinking all the while. Of course it would break my heart if I saw that pretty girl at the piano actually married to the man she had already poached. Yes, of course it would, I told myself resolutely; but at the bottom of my heart I was stifling a mad little imp of an idea. This whispered:—
"You wouldn't mind if Muriel married Harry now. Although it was a stab, it wasn't a deep one. Don't pretend! For you are really through with Harry. It is not about Harry that you are worrying any more!"
—Ah! Now I was getting nearer the truth. I was coming to it, coming... But I still told myself it was Harry whose engagement would hurt me. Why should I mind if——
Here a storm of applause broke out all round me. It was the end of the clog-dance, but in the midst of the din I went on revolving my own little problem.
I told myself that, of course, it was comparatively nothing to me if Muriel chose to marry this devoted cousin of hers, Captain Holiday. He (I considered, personally) was rather too good for her. Still, most other people would consider that no man could be too good for a girl as lovely as Muriel Elvey.
Anyhow, it was no business of mine. Who was I? Merely a Land Girl, sunburnt and coarsely clothed, a worker in training at a farm on Captain Holiday's estate. Why should I care twopence about this whole question? I didn't care. Of course, I didn't care.
Here Sybil, who had secured a programme, leant over me to look at mine. The next item read: "Song: 'Until!' by Sergeant Sydney Escott."
"Ah," said Vic, with feeling, "now we are going to hear something. Eh, Peggy?"
All the Land Girls were leaning towards the smallest Timber Girl, chaffing and smiling encouragement. Peggy, to whom this was "the" item of the programme, popped a piece of toffee into her mouth, and assumed a look as if she had never heard the singer's name before.
But just as we expected to see her sweetheart jump up on to the platform, one of the other blue-coated, red-cravated boys came up in answer to a nod from Captain Holiday, bearing under his arm a large cardboard placard. This he put up, carefully, in the number-stand at the side of the piano. The word upon it in large scarlet letters was "Extra."
Everybody in the hall murmured it aloud. Vic's carrying voice rose above all the others.
"'Extra'? Now what's this goin' to be? Surprise turn, eh?" she said.
She was right.
With an arresting jerk it brought me out of the mood in which I was beginning to forget that there was a concert going on about me at all. It brought me straight back to where I was, in the entertainment hall of Captain Holiday's Hospital, in the middle of a crowd of eager, enjoying people.
Truly it was to be a startler to me, the surprise turn that came on next!
"Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour,The heavy white limbs and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower,When these are gone by with their glories,What shall rest of thee then, what remain,Oh wicked and sombre Dolores."—SWINBURNE.
There swept down towards the impromptu foot-lights an apparition tall and beautiful. Dressed as a Spanish lady, it was a study in black, white, and red. Black was the mantilla draped so filmily over the glossy black hair, black was the sequined gown that clung to the slim shape, black was the fan that waved, beckoned, hid, revealed and hid again in a series of gestures, each more perfectly and subtly coquettish than the last.
White was the handsome face, whiter the proud shoulders above the cut-out bodice. Scarlet was the carnation worn just under the ear, and vividly scarlet were the made-up lips of this new performer.
"Whoever is it?" ejaculated Peggy, loudly, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. But there was a perceptibly louder buzz in the talk all over the hall.
"Say; who's she?"
"Isn't she beautiful?"
"Lovely figure——"
"Little bit o' Dixie, eh?"
"Sssh—— The Captain's goin' to make a speech about her!"
For Captain Holiday had stepped forward from his place by the piano and had, with a sort of little laughing flourish, taken the lovely creature's black-gloved hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "as an extra, my friend Signora Dolores has kindly consented to sing an old-fashioned song, entitled 'Carissima.'"
He went back to his seat. Muriel at the piano, with an unexpectedly sweet smile towards this rival beauty, this wonderful stranger who was to sing, struck the first rippling chords of an accompaniment.
Then, from those vermilioned lips there broke out in a low contralto voice the first notes of the song:
"Carissima, the night is fair——"
What a voice! It was not powerful—indeed, it seemed to me as if the singer were using only part of it—but to what purpose! It was sweet as the deepest brown honey, and of a quality that—well! even as the water-finder's rod goes straight home to the hidden spring, so that kind of voice, "finds" the listener's heart—finds tears.
Surprised at myself, I blinked those tears away. I glanced from the black, white and scarlet beauty on the stage to the audience for a moment. All spellbound, all a-gaze.
I saw little Mrs. Price—a row back—slip her hand into that of her gentle giant beside her. I saw Vic's face without a smile, full of brooding tender memories. I saw Elizabeth all tense ... the soldier-boys were serious, intent; the country people behind them looked as full of solemn, poignant enjoyment as if this were not a mere Concert, but a funeral itself.
As for me, I was ashamed of myself. I had to bite my lips and clench my hands as the syrupy Victorian melody was crooned out to the inanely Victorian words:—
"Carissima! Cariss—ima!The night and I wa-ant oh-oh-oh-only thee!"
Yes; I was having to fight those senseless tears away from my eyes as I listened.
Oh! It wasn't "cricket" for that woman to sing so that she could reduce a healthy matter-of-fact Land-worker to this state of—of mushy sentimentality!
She did more than that. Before the end of the second verse she made me realize something that left me gasping.
I was just thinking, while I listened:
"Ah, if her voice goes so straight home, unconsciously, what must be the effect if she sings 'at' somebody?"
Then I saw her do that very thing. Slightly, raising the fan with a little studied gesture, the singer tilted her head and launched from under her eyelashes a deliberate glance at Captain Holiday. I saw him raise his brown chin out of his hand and look back at her hard, too.
Then I saw the Signora's reddened lips tremble, even through the song, into the very wickedest of smiles that would not be suppressed. It dimpled her powdered cheeks; it almost shut her long-lashed eyes; what a tantalizing and lovely sight! But everybody in the place must have seen that she was singing "at" him; must have heard it!
"Carissima!"
cooed that wooing contralto with its invincible appeal,
"Cariss-ima!My boat and I will come to thee."
And with "thee" the glance was more unmistakably "at" Captain Holiday than before.
Then I knew.
This Spaniard—if she were Spanish?—this stranger with the voice and the fan and the shoulders, and the slim hips and the witching glances that surely no man on earth could withstand, must be "she" of whom Captain Holiday had spoken to me!
Not Muriel, after all. The blonde prettiness of Muriel looked positively ineffectual beside this vivid brunette. She, yes! she must be "THE" girl he'd meant.
Here was a discovery.
But the annihilating part of it was this—that I minded horribly.
For in a flash I felt that I could not deny it to myself. No longer could I pretend to my own heart. Jealous I was, more so than I'd ever been before. But now it was not because of Harry at all. It never would be Harry again.
It was mad pain to me to see a woman—any woman—bent upon attracting Dick Holiday.
Yes, I'd come to the truth now. This had shown it to me.
At last I realized that I was in love with him....
Here was a discovery, wasn't it?
* * * * * * *
In love with Captain Holiday! Of all people in the world!
What in the world had he ever done to make me in love with him?
That first time at the hut he had been hideously rude to me; had come up to me and, unintroduced, had asked me how long I thought I was going to stick life in the Land Army!
I remembered his smile as he said it.
Then that next time in the cowshed. He'd come upon me in the act of chucking work, and he'd let me know that he knew it. Then he'd laid down the law to me about the way to "muck out," as the country phrase has it, the way to hold a pitchfork, and the way to trundle a barrow up to the manure-heap. Nothing in that to make a girl take any sort of a fancy to him!
Later on, he had informed me that I should make a rotten poor hen-wife, just because I'd forgotten the milk for the chickens' food! Not very endearing, that remark!
That same afternoon, however, he had been friendly. He'd walked back with me, talking all the way. But what about? His own love affair. The problem of the girl to whom he had proposed, and who had said neither "yes" nor "no" to him. And I—not realizing that I was getting too fond of the sound of his voice whatever it happened to be saying—I had asked him what sort of a girl she was. He'd said the words that had been ringing in my head ever since: "Ah, well! She's just the girl I want."
* * * * * * *
And now here she was; I saw her before me, the beautiful Spanish-clad singer, on this very concert platform, not more than arms' length from him.
I found myself simply hating her! The last words of her song—oh! how that tune of "Carissima" was going to haunt me—melted away. Muriel played the last chord, and again the racket of applause broke out.
She smiled with all her white teeth; she bowed, gracefully enough but put her hand with a curious little jerk to her side as she did so.
How the boys clapped her! So did I, of course, and, holding myself well in hand, I exchanged comments on the lovely voice with the other girls through the clatter and the cries of "'Core! Encore!"
The Signora gave a little nod that she would take the encore to Muriel, who was clapping as enthusiastically as any of the audience.
And the second song she sang was the revue success: "For the First Love is the Best Love!" which she rendered as perfectly as she had the Victorian ballad. I could have murdered her for that!
Half in anguish of jealousy, half in rapture because of the performance, I sat listening again. She had the low, throaty deliciousness of some of Miss Violet Loraine's own notes; very wisely, she was imitating her as closely as possible in her rendering of her best song.
"The new LoveIs never the true Love!"
she carolled, and again I felt the keen stab of seeing her mischievously tender glance at Captain Holiday.
Oh, yes. She must be going to take him—after that!
And at the end of the song, when she stood still again, swaying her fan to the applause, she maddened me by a further piece of deliberate coquetry.
Putting up a hand to the coal-black hair under her mantilla, she took out the scarlet carnation that was tucked close to her ear. She kissed the flower with those lips, painted so red. Then, holding it for a moment, she smiled from the carnation to Captain Holiday, if saying, "Shall I let him have it? Shall I?" She made a little, quick gesture as if to toss it to him, across the platform. Then, with a lightning-swift shake of her lovely head, she took that flower and threw it down into the auditorium for any to catch who could.
A dozen hands went out for it. I don't know if she were specially aiming at the row in which we Land Girls found ourselves, but at all events the carnation dropped almost straight into the small, brown, competent paw of Elizabeth, my chum, who had always been used to catch and throw a cricket ball just as a boy does.
She, Elizabeth, tucked the scented souvenir into the breast of her overall. The signora, standing tall and slim just above the footlights that beat up on to the vivid white and scarlet of her make-up, sent down one more smile—a specially witching one. Then she withdrew. Captain Holiday set up another piece of music on the piano, and the concert proceeded.
It was Peggy's sweetheart, the sergeant, who sang next.
At least, I fancy it was. For, to tell you the truth, I have only the most confused impression of the various faces and figures that appeared, one after another, close to Muriel's piano on that stage.
Sometimes it was one of the red-white-and-blue wounded boys. Sometimes the slim, white-frocked figure of the village schoolmaster's daughter, for whom they brought in a harp.
I was drawn away from it to the drama in my own mind.
I—to have grown to care for Captain Holiday! Fool that I was to have allowed myself——
But, then, I hadn't allowed myself. I had not known it was happening. Now it had irretrievably happened. Tonight had shown me that too plainly.
What fate was upon me? Twice in my life I had been doomed to fall in love with the wrong man. First with Harry Markham, who certainly had done all in his power to bring it about. Now with Captain Dick Holiday, who had never flirted with me for an instant.
Well, I must try to cure myself as soon as possible—that was the only thing.
I must, somehow, take myself severely in hand and refuse to let myself mind so horribly because a woman with a voice to match her lovely face had got Captain Holiday at her feet.
But for the life of me I could not help wondering who the singer was. Signora Dolores—was she really a Signora? Or was she an English girl of an arrestingly Spanish type? Where had she come from? And when had she come to Careg? How long was she going to stay in the house?
I wondered how Muriel liked that Spanish girl who had so completely taken the shine out of her.
I wondered if she—the wonderful singer—were going to sing again.
She did not.
I realized that this was more of her coquetry; to make one marvellous appearance, to reap her success, and then to refuse to reappear until the last note of "God save the King" had been sung, with all the wounded soldiers, and ourselves of the Land Army, standing to attention.
Yes; at last it came to the end of the concert. Votes of thanks had been proposed and seconded. Cheers had been given for our host, Captain Holiday, for the performers, and for "the pretty young lady who had so kindly consented to act as accompanist," but there was no further sign of the lovely lady who had sang "Carissima."
I supposed that she, with the rest of the house-party, would be having a merry little supper afterwards, presided over by Captain Holiday. I am afraid that at the thought of this I felt myself literally trembling with passionate envy.
The audience, laughing and talking, began to move slowly from between the rows of chairs out from the concert-room. I found that I was deadly tired; an evening of emotion takes it out of a girl considerably more than a day of farm-work! I turned for comfort to the sturdy little boyish figure of Elizabeth.
I made myself say, "It has been jolly, hasn't it?"
Elizabeth nodded her bobbed head.
I glanced at the red flower she had tucked into her overall, and said: "That woman, you know, who sang those two songs, she was the best of all."
Elizabeth, with a very quick look up at me, asked brusquely, "Which woman?"
I had opened my mouth to answer, "Why, the Spanish lady, of course," but the words froze on my lips at the picture of which I had caught sight at this moment.
In the vestibule, at the foot of the wide stairs, stood Captain Holiday, laughing whole-heartedly; a group of people were clustered about him and about another figure standing close to him waving a big black fan. This figure was the sight that arrested me.
It was tall and slim-hipped, clad in a black and spangled gown with a low-cut bodice that revealed noble white shoulders; it was, as far as the figure went, that of the Signora Dolores who had appeared at the beginning of the second part of the concert; but—where were the mantilla and the glossy black tresses over which it had been so artistically draped? Gone—one with the other! Above the white shoulders appeared the laughing face and the small mercilessly-groomed golden head of a young man!
"Topping girl he makes, doesn't he?" I heard the voice of the red-haired actor-soldier say just behind me. "That's when I make him up; his own mother wouldn't know him. Why, the female impersonator we had in our Brigade troupe isn't a patch on him; not the professional who used to get fifteen quid a week salary! Asked me for a few tips, he did. But there was nothing I could teach him; only lace him into his 23-inch ladies' corsets——"
I was gasping as I looked. Now that I saw the black wig dangling from the hand that held the fan, now that I knew—oh, I felt I ought to have guessed before.
The things that give away any masquerading "girl" were there. Bert Errol and Co. have not yet learnt to hide the thickness of the wrist, the muscle down the neck just under the ear, the checked and conscious movements of limbs that know no medium between mincing and the normal stride, and (most unmistakable of all) the angle of the male arm at the elbow, which makes "V" instead of "U," as in a woman's soft arm.
All the rest was—what an excellent disguise!
"Elizabeth!" I exclaimed stupidly, "look!"
"I know," said Elizabeth briefly.
"But, my dear," I said, still aghast over the revelation that Dolores was not "THE" girl, not even "a" girl, "did you know when she—when he was singing?"
Elizabeth, with a hand at the red flower in her smock, said: "I knew days ago. Colonel Fielding told me himself that he was going to."
Colonel Fielding!
The "lovely" stranger was—Elizabeth's "old Colonel."
The discussions of the concert, after it had happened, went on for as many days in our camp as the pre-concert discussions.
I'll skip those. I'll skip the days which suddenly seemed to have "gone flat," with all the thrill gone out of Land-work, for the time being. I'll skip my own broodings—which were those of just any other girl in love with a man who prefers another woman! For since it could not be the "Signora" I concluded that it was Muriel after all.
I'll come to the next excitement in the Land-worker's life—namely, the test-exams.!
You see our time was nearly up at the Practice Farm. Our six weeks' training was drawing to a close. If, at the tests, we gained a certain percentage of marks, Elizabeth and I would be considered "finished pupils," and we would be passed out and sent off.
Where?
Heaven and the Organizing Secretary of the County knew where that job would be found.
I told myself that I only hoped it would be a good long trail away from Careg, away from the farm of bitter-sweet memories.
Vic was instructive on the subject of the changes to come.
"Any people ought to like the look o' you two, now you've shaped to the work," she kindly remarked. "Still, you never know whether looks is going to help a girl or to stand in her way in this world. A nice thing it would be if you was landed like one of the smartest-looking girls I ever saw join up, Chrissie Devon!"
"What happened to her?" I inquired.
"Chrissie was fine with horses," Vic said, "all her people having ridden. She was a clever girl, well educated, and a beautiful figure on horseback. I-T, she was. The secretary got her a job with a brother of our Mr. Rhys, the bailiff, who keeps a lot of horses. Thought it would be just the right thing for her. So it would have. The only thing was, our Mr. Rhys's brother didn't consider himself half-artful. He——"
Vic broke off to laugh.
"He turned up at the station before the one that she was going to, and saw her in the train. And," Vic concluded with an impressive nod, "sent her back to the depot by the next one. Then he strafed our poor little organizing secretary till she didn't dare see him for a year. 'The idea!' says he, 'of sending me a girl that looked like that! Me, a widower. She would be owning the horses and me inside o' six months!'"
"So then," Vic told us, "Chrissie was sent to a very old married couple up in the hills. The old man was about ninety, and the old woman p'raps a shade more juvenile. Chrissie worked her hardest for them. But, if you'll believe me, she didn't give satisfaction there neither. The old woman asked our secretary if she couldn't be removed. And when the secretary asked what was the grouse, it turns out that the old woman was certain that the new Land Girl had taken it into her head that she would be 'his second.' I ask you!"
"And where did she go to next?" Elizabeth asked.
"Chrissie? Oh, now's she going in for motor-tractor driving. She don't stay long enough in one place to put anybody's back up with her fatal beauty. That's the story of her. I wonder what they'll do with you and Mop?"
The day of the tests arrived.
It should have seen the arrival also of the examiner from London. Of this unknown personage we were all, including the gentle giant, Mr. Price, in a state of terror. However, a telegram came to say that this magnate was unable to attend.
His place was taken by the local examiner, who turned out to be that other Mr. Rhys, the widower who had strafed the organizing secretary for sending him a too-good-looking Land Girl. Now he and that secretary, a little bright-eyed Welshwoman who had been a school-marm, had evidently made up their difference.
She, the secretary, had come over to help with the tests, for which we had in the big farmyard an audience that I had not expected. Not only these examiners and the two Prices looked on while I brought in the cows to the stalls and set to work with stool and pail, but also the visitors from the Lodge!
Heavens! how my heart sank into my clumping Land Army boots as I beheld the little procession coming through the red-painted farmyard gate. Captain Holiday, in those disgraceful but becoming grey tweeds of his, was walking with Mrs. Elvey in her smartest toque! Behind them the slim-waisted, uniformed figure of young Colonel Fielding, escorting Muriel Elvey.
"We've come to look on at the tests, if we may," Captain Holiday announced cheerfully to the Prices.
Greetings were exchanged with the ladies, and though I kept my eyes quite steadily upon the work that I had in hand, I could not help seeing Muriel's amused stare and smile, just as I couldn't help hearing her treble twitter to the men of "mustn't it be too quaint to have to wear those clothes and things—and how wonderful not to be afraid of all those great animals—I should be terrified of cows, I know I should."
Indulgent laughter came from all the men. I remembered one of Elizabeth's contemptuous axioms about the sex—"a pretty girl can't be too helpless or too afraid of mice to please a man, even now!"
Elizabeth, at this moment sitting beside the cow, Blodwen, wore her most man-hating looks upon her small, set face. As for me, I felt that now, on this occasion of all others, when, as a Land-worker, I ought to have been at my best, I was absolutely at my worst, nervous, flurried and awkward.
I had a hideous presentiment that I should overturn my milking-pail, or some fiasco of that sort!
Raging inwardly, I approached the black-and-white cow who had become my friend. She was the easiest in the stable, as Mrs. Price had said on that first time of all when I had milked her. But now, to my horror, I realized that she was going to fidget and to be difficult. She was going to "let me down" before all these people!
Suddenly I heard Captain Holiday's voice, not brusque as usual, but quiet.
"I say, Muriel, my child," he said, "stand outside the door, will you? If strangers go and stand close up to the cow when she's being milked she gets bad-tempered and there's no doing anything with her."
"Oh, isn't there? I didn't know. I'm so sorry," said Muriel, airily, and she fluttered out to stand beside Colonel Fielding.
Feeling grateful beyond words to the man who had helped me thus, I went on milking with more assurance. The nervous flurry melted away from me. I succeeded in forgetting that I was doing what I was with a maximum of so many marks for "approach," for "time," for "quantity," for "clean-stripping."
I forgot Mrs. Elvey's lorgnette upon me from the cow-house door; and the eyes of the others, and the chatter of Muriel to the two young men.
I just did the best I could.
Presently Mr. Rhys, the examiner, had taken Elizabeth and me into an empty shed, and, looking doubtfully upon us, began to ask us simple questions as to our everyday work. I was glad to realize that—as is so often the case with the male examiner—he was more nervous than we were. Or did he think that we, too, had designs upon his widowerhood?
At all events, the marks that Mr. Rhys put down upon his papers seemed to be satisfactory.
"Well, after all, I may have squeezed through!" I thought.
And half an hour later Mrs. Price came to Elizabeth and me in the kitchen, where she had insisted upon our having a cup of tea after our labours, and told us that we had both got through our tests with nearly full marks in all subjects.
Pride filled my heart, as you may imagine. Surely it was not an unnatural thing for the thought to flash across me:
"Well, now Captain Holiday will hear that! He'll know that I am not a complete imbecile at my job after all, even if he did go away this afternoon before he saw that I had got over my nervousness!"—for the whole of the Lodge party had disappeared towards the farm before I had begun upon my second cow. "He'll have to think that I am some sort of a credit to him after all the tips he's given me. And perhaps he will say so to Muriel, even if he is in love with her."
And then I put away those thoughts.
As Elizabeth and I tramped back to camp with the glad news that we were now fully fledged Land-workers, I turned resolutely to the future and the new job.
The little organizing secretary had promised to let us know in a day or two what she had settled for us. She had also promised to arrange that Elizabeth and I should be sent somewhere together.
For the meantime we were to stay where we were in camp, as it seemed scarcely worth while to move us to the depot. The secretary said she was almost certain she had got us our job—at a rectory with a farm attached. It was at the other side of the county.
"That's a good thing!" thought I.
I did not say so to Elizabeth. I hadn't confided a word to Elizabeth of what I felt. I had taken my confidence away from the once-intimate chum.
And then suddenly her confidence returned to me; in fact, I had it as I'd never had it before.
It was on the afternoon after we'd passed our tests—Sunday. (On the Monday we were to hear for certain about that new job of ours.) I'd missed Elizabeth shortly after the midday meal, and I found her in that old haunt of hers on the wall under the bushes.