England must be fed ([page 17])

A LAND-GIRL'S
LOVE STORY

BY

BERTA RUCK

Author of "His Official Fiancée," "In Another
Girl's Shoes," "The Three of Hearts," etc.

With Illustrations by
EDWARD C. CASWELL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY MRS. GEORGE OLIVER

TO
ALL THE GIRLS I MET
IN FARM, FIELD AND FOREST
WISHING THEM THE BEST OF LUCK,
AND LIFE, AND LOVE
FROM BERTA RUCK

Wales, 1918

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I ["Man Made the Town"]
II [Two Voices Call]
III [The Toss-Up]
IV [The First Night in Camp]
V [The First Job]
VI [The Farmhouse Meal]
VII [After-Effects]
VIII [The Plunge]
IX [Our Mess-Mates]
X [The Milking-Lesson]
XI [The Land-Girls' Letter-Bag]
XII [We "Get Used to It"]
XIII [An Invitation]
XIV [The Hen-Wife]
XV [Mostly Conversation]
XVI [Curious Conduct of the Man-Hater]
XVII [Land-Girls go Shopping]
XVIII [The Night of the Concert]
XIX [The Surprise Turn]
XX [Land Army Tests]
XXI [The Man-Hater Discusses Men]
XXII [Hay-Harvest]
XXIII [Colonel Fielding Discusses "Enjoyment"]
XXIV [Storm]
XXV [After the Rain]
XXVI [Colonel Fielding Discusses "Love and the Like"]
XXVII [A Kitchen Courtship]
XXVIII [The Onlooker]
XXIX [Love—After the Interval]
XXX [Colonel Fielding Discusses "The Mystery-Girl"]
XXXI [A Few Facts about Richard Wynn]
XXXII [Butter-Making—With Accompaniment]
XXXIII ["Our" Germans]
XXXIV [Harvest, Nineteen-Eighteen]
XXXV ["Fire, Fire!"]
XXXVI [The Harvest-Moon]
[Postscript—The Victory-Dance]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[England must be fed] ... Frontispiece

["I was going to ask you to join up for the Land Army"]

[We agreed that we were simply loving the life and the people, the work and the play]

[Still leaning on the gate, Captain Holiday said: "I'm glad the country won that toss"]

A LAND-GIRL'S LOVE STORY

A LAND-GIRL'S LOVE STORY

CHAPTER I
"MAN MADE THE TOWN"

"What's this dull town to me?
Robin's not near.
What was't I wished to see?
What wished to hear?
Where's all the joy and mirth made this town a Heav'n on earth?
Oh, they are all fled with thee, Robin Adair!"
—SCOTS SONG.

"There! I told you what kind of a young man he was, Joan."

I only groaned; my elbows on the breakfast-table and my head buried in my hands. What does it matter what "kind" of young man he is, when you're in love with him?

"He's a beauty," declared my chum Elizabeth. She pushed back the letter which had come as such a knockout to me. "Who's this 'Muriel' who writes to tell you that she's just seen Harry Markham off to Salonika, when you didn't even know he'd got his orders?"

"It's Muriel Elvey; I introduced him to her myself at the theatre about a fortnight ago," I explained, stunned. "That very pretty girl who was at school in Germany with me. I didn't know they'd met again.... He didn't say good-bye to me! ..."

"Rotter," snorted Elizabeth boyishly.

But some of us would rather be happy with a charming "rotter" than be bored for life by one of those prigs who never do anything wrong.

Haggardly I stared at that letter with its gold-printed "Muriel" at the top, its whiff of Chaminade. Little Elizabeth scowled sympathetically. She always had had a grimace for the name of Captain Harry Markham, who had been my idol for the last year.

(A rotter! What difference does that make!)

For that year life was a whirl of thrills and pangs because of one young soldier-man's black eyes and red tabs. At first it was all thrill. That's bound to be when the Harry-type—a born fighter and philanderer—leader of men and misleader of women—fills up a girl's horizon with his telephone-calls, his invitations, his flatteries—and himself.

Feverishly happy, I blessed the job that kept me where he was.

(And now this! This!)

My job was one of those that are described as "thundering good for a girl." It brought me in nearly three pounds a week, for I was secretary to a quite important official in one of those big rabbit-warren buildings in Whitehall that we call Ministries. It kept me indoors from ten A.M. until half-past six or seven or—if we'd a rush of work—eight o'clock at night.

It kept nerve and brain on the stretch, too! My chief insisted upon taking the last ounce out of his under-strappers. Also, he had a horrible temper. But I accepted that as cheerfully as I accepted the stuffiness of that rabbit-warren, and the rushed lunches, and the work that was draining all the go-stuff out of me.

You see, my people lived in the country, and—because of Harry—I simply had to live in town. It would have killed me, I thought, to tear myself away from London and from our flat near Golder's Green. This had been let, furnished, by an officer, now at the front, to me and my old school-chum, Elizabeth Weare, who was clerk at my rabbit-warren. We did our own housework and marketing and cooking, tired as we were, after our office-day was done. Sounds rather like all work and no play? But it wasn't.

There was play, to take it out of me more than work. Play turned my days into a succession of wild jumps across stepping-stones. The stones, of course, were the times when Harry took me out. I would have worked underground and consented never to see the light of day, provided that I still saw him. Ah, I'm not the first girl who has made Paradise out of bricks and mortar, just because they hold a Harry!

I thought I was growing to mean to him as much as he meant to me. Elizabeth did warn me, but who ever takes any notice of these warnings from the looker-on who sees the game? And Elizabeth was by way of being a Man-Hater anyhow, so how put any trust in her opinion of my Prince Charming?

Gradually there slipped through the thrill of it all the first pang of doubt. Surely he meant to propose? No? Yes? No?

The pangs came oftener. Could he mean nothing? Just the flirtation that camouflages itself under the name of being great pals? Or would he presently say something? This was a wearing time, I can tell you. Presently the thrills grew fewer, the pangs more frequent. This is also bound to be when the Harry-type cools off again. Was he cooling? Wasn't he? A see-saw of agony!

Slowly zest and colour began to fade out of the life that saw less and less of the young staff officer whose fancy I had amused for some months.

Hope dies hard.

Then a whole fortnight—this last one—went by without a sign from him. I hoped on, wildly, that something would happen, and, finally, this very morning, something had happened with a vengeance! It had killed hope with a sledge-hammer.

Devastating news came from that girl to whom I'd introduced him myself! I might have known that Harry the Susceptible would fall to Muriel's lovely little Lily-Elsie-like face! At that German school they had all raved about it, I remember; walking down Unter den Linden, Muriel had always been put between the two severest governesses, and even so the tightly-uniformed Prussian officers had followed and had jostled us in passing to try to steal one glance from "die bild-hübsche Engländerin's" demure big eyes.

So those eyes had been the last into which Harry had smiled before he left Blighty again! I had never had another look; I who adored him, who had been given to suppose that he returned it.

Harry had gone. Gone! Without a good-bye. Well—it was all over—finished—na poo!

I was left to make what I could of the situation.

What could I do?

Apparently nothing but gulp down my sugarless tea, push aside the stale war-bread with its one scrape of margarine that represented my breakfast, and set off for my day's work, leaving Elizabeth to wash up. She had a day off from the rabbit-warren. I wished I had; I scarcely felt like coping with the office.

"Poor old kid! Such is men," grunted Elizabeth. "You look absolutely played out."

"Do I? I needn't ever bother again about how I look. That's one comfort," I sighed, as I crammed on my hat.

This had an impertinent little wreath of coloured buds, and was lined with rose, because Harry said pink next to my face always suited me. I'd bought it to wear up the river with him.

Oh, the pathos of these hats, these pretty frocks that have been specially bought for "some" man! Long after that man has ceased to care a button what one wears the hat is still fresh, the frock seems to go on and on. Things remain. It's the people who change. I must have changed, too, after a blow in the face like that! What had it done to me? I gave one deliberate and searching glance at myself in the sitting-room looking-glass.

It showed me a plain and weary girl, with ten years added to her actual age. A slim, stooping figure that moved without zest. Eyes without brightness. Hair ditto—where were "the goldy lights" that Harry once praised in my hair? It was as drab and dull as the whole of my outlook had grown in the last half-hour.

I'd had what is called a ripping time, you see. Here was the bill I had to pay—low, secret misery, dark heaviness of heart, looks and girlishness lost—as I thought—for ever!

I stuffed into my bag the fateful letter that had knocked the bottom out of my world for me.

"You're forgetting these," Elizabeth reminded me, handing me a couple of other envelopes that lay unopened by my plate. I hadn't even noticed them.

"Haven't time," I said, pocketing them as I dashed down the four flights of brass-bound steps from our flat to the entrance.

There was no sign that either of those unopened letters held anything out of the ordinary. In my own mind I had no presentiment of wonder to come. I thought I knew my fate, thanks.

Let this be a lesson to any young woman who thinks the like. For when she is quite, quite sure that "all is over" for her, that is the moment when "All" is preparing to begin.

* * * * * * *

Here I've given you my picture as I was all those weeks ago. Now skip those weeks and see the contrast; the picture of me as I am today. A straight and supple body, all conscious of the Jest of living. Limbs rounded and firm. Face joyous, glowing, and clean-skinned under the tan. Hair glossy and full of gleams; eyes bright as the morning, with the atmosphere of sunshine and clean airs all round me. A new self, in fact, made by a new life. Thousands of girls all over the country at this moment can show the same miracle.

I am going to tell you the story of how it happened to me.

* * * * * * *

I had to rush for my Tube train, only in time to be held up by that exasperating wooden barrier, while the corncrake voice of the official rasped out: "Stand back, there!" And the train did not move out for another good half-minute.

Fuming, I waited on the platform, squashed against that barrier by the crowd who pressed behind me—a crowd who looked nervy and strained, and who—to put it mildly—smelt. Well, any business girl who glances at her light blouse after a day's work in town will know what I mean. I myself must have looked about as cheery as that face one sometimes catches sight of at the small square window of a black prison-van.

The only air and exercise I ever got in those days were in the three hundred yards' walk from our Mansions to the Tube, and in the two minutes' scurry at the other end from the Tube station to the rabbit-warren.

I hung on to a strap all the way to Charing Cross, hating everything. That letter seemed to have laid open all my nerves; they were jarred by the jostling passengers, by the conductor's raucous shouts, by the very advertisements of patent medicines and boot polish on the Tube walls, by the steps, the lift, in fact, everything to do with the loathsome journey.

At the office I got a black look from my chief, Mr. Winter, and a stinging comment on my lateness. I'd had them before, but then I'd scarcely noticed them. Now the daily round seemed unbearable.

When I had Harry to look forward to in the evening, it scarcely mattered how my day was spent. But now—ye gods! I suddenly found everything rankling—the look of the rabbit-warren's dingy corridors and annexes, the click of the typewriters, the whir of the telephone bells, and the Cockney accents of some of the workers!

And worst of all was the inevitable office smell, made up of so many horrors. I put them in their order of unpleasantness:—

The hot iron of the water pipes.

Ink.

Dust.

Common yellow soap.

The sink.

Stale office towels.

Cigars.

All this sounds an unmitigated grouse! But I have to get it over, showing you the perfectly revolting time I had. Sunlight and sweet air have since streamed into my days. But how can I forget the stuffiness of Mr. Winter's room?

"Can't we keep that window shut?" was my chief's motto.

The one extremely grimy window gave on to Whitehall, and to open even a crack of it let in all the noise of the traffic.

"Can't we have that window kept SHUT?"

The last word rang out like the crack of a whip almost before I got in, on this particular morning.

I shut the window and got to work, suddenly wondering, "Shall I go on like this until I'm eighty?" My job for that beastly morning was to check long columns of figures on blue paper, with a form-number at the top, from duplicate lists.

Thrilling!

My eyes swam and my head throbbed as I muttered to myself over the table: "Nine thousand three hundred and sixty-five pounds nineteen shillings and a penny. Nine thousand three hundred and sixty-five pounds nineteen and a penny. (Tick off.) Two thousand four hundred and ten pounds eleven shillings," and so on. The lists almost invariably tallied, but one dared not risk an error. "Nine thousand three hundred and——!"

What a life! I saw it now as it was. That letter had opened my eyes. Oh, to get away from it all!

At lunch-time I went out, avoiding the chattering throng of girls. It was one of those sultry early-Spring days that seem hotter than July. All the luncheon-places were as full up as the Tube had been. I could not wait for a seat in that atmosphere of not-too-cheap but nasty food.

Eggs that were "fresh in places," badly poached, on toast limp with water, and never a suspicion of butter—fish that had said good-bye to the sea many days ago; or burnt pieces of bacon swimming in thin fat—all these presented unpalatable realities which I felt absolutely unable to face that day of days.

Sickened, I turned back into the glare of Trafalgar Square. I sat down listlessly in the only patch of shade that I could find, on the steps of the National Gallery. I looked across the bone-dry fountains where wounded soldiers were swinging their bluer-trousered legs. I gazed gloomily past the Nelson Column, down Whitehall, with its 'buses and people.

Ants on a human ant-heap, struggling for life—but was it worth living? Deep in my heart the thought persisted, "I must get out of this. I can't stand it. How can I get away?"

Half-consciously my hand went to my bag to feel for the letter that had blackened existence. I hadn't looked at it again since Elizabeth had indignantly pushed it back to me. My fingers met the two other letters, not yet opened.

"May as well see what they are," I thought, drearily.

One was a rather terrifying bill for shoes. Well, it would be the last of its kind—it's love that comes so ruinously expensive in nice shoes and stockings!

The other was in a clear, strong hand-writing that I didn't know, and it had been forwarded on from my home.

I opened it.

Picture me, a speck of navy-blue and white on the grey steps. London glaring and blaring beyond me, and in my hand the scrap of paper—the second letter that was to fall upon me like a thunderbolt. First, Muriel's about Harry. Now this. I'd been actually carrying it about with me all the morning unopened, cheek-by-jowl with that other letter!

Listen to it!

Except that it was dated from some barracks, I didn't notice the address. My eye had at once caught the first sentence:

"My dear Joan,—They say a woman never forgets the first man who has kissed her——"

Wouldn't those words give any girl a jolt? They, startled me, even in my stricken state. "The first man who'd ever kissed me"—but the first and only man had been Harry himself! What on earth was the meaning of this, in a stranger's handwriting? It went on:

"That is why I have the cheek to write to you. Now you'll turn to the end of this letter to see who I am."

Exactly what I found myself doing, breathlessly!

CHAPTER II
TWO VOICES CALL

"Do you remember that day in November
Long, long ago; long ago?"
—OLD SONG.

"Who'll grow the bread of Victory?
Who'll keep the country clean?
Who'll reap Old England golden?
Who'll sow her thick and green?
Carry on, carry on! for the men and boys are gone,
But the furrow shan't lie fallow while the women carry on."
—JANET BEGBIE.

The signature of the letter was—

"Yours,
"RICHARD WYNN."

Now, who in the world might he be? Richard Wynn? Wynn?

Ah! Suddenly I realized why the surname at least was familiar. Mr. Wynn! Of course! I placed him, now. I did remember. Sitting there, wan, on this the most miserable morning of my life, my thoughts were switched back just seven years.

Seven mortal years ago! A gap between a disillusioned young woman of twenty-two and a gawky eager child of fifteen, as I then was.

That had been in the days when we lived on the borders of Wales. My father had farmed, in a scrambling sort of way, the small estate that he owned there, and as he had to make ends meet somehow, he had taken in a trio of hobbledehoys as farm pupils—what they'd learnt from dear old Dad's antiquated methods goodness only knows.

Mr. Wynn was the eldest of these pupils. I don't think I'd ever taken as much interest in him as I had in the fox terrier puppy that he gave me just before he sailed for the ranch of an uncle in Canada. But I had hated his going away. I always did hate partings, even from the succession of mountain-bred cooks who stayed their six months with us. On that gloomy autumn morning, with the mountains blotted out by mist and the rain coming down in a steady drip-drip-drip on the slate roof, when we had all gathered in the veranda to say good-bye to the departing pupil I had suddenly felt like bursting into tears.

Mr. Wynn, the leggy, dark-haired Welsh lad of nineteen, had turned with his brand-new suit-case all ready labelled in his hand, had seen my blank look, had stared down upon me and had clutched me by the pig-tail as I turned to flee.

"Nice kid, ripping kid," he'd muttered in a brusque, touched young voice. "Give us a kiss for good-bye, Joan."

And he'd drawn my head back by its plait and kissed me under the eyes of my amused family. They had ragged me about it for months. How should I, at that age, have guessed the difference between that and a real kiss? Years later Harry had slipped the real kisses into my life, in the course of conversation, so to speak, and by imperceptible degrees, which was Harry's insidious way of making love—none the less fatal!

Now, on the very day when love had left me in a way so very far from being imperceptible, here was this reminder from that other, forgotten young man, that went on:

"Plenty of things have happened since we said good-bye; but I've often wondered what became of the pretty kid with the thick brown pigtail. You'd a blue bow on it that day, and you never noticed that I walked off with that. I suppose there's just an off-chance that you are not married yet. Are you? If you aren't, would you care to marry me?"

I gasped as I came to this. Who wouldn't have been petrified?

"Would you care to marry me?"

But how—how fantastic! At breakfast-time upon this very day I'd had conveyed to me the devastating news that the one young man on whom my thoughts had hung wished to see no more of me. Now, at midday, here was shock No. 2. Another young man, of whom I hadn't thought since I was grown up, was actually proposing to me.

Both on one day!

Was I living in some wild dream of coincidences? But no. The Harry-wound went on aching steadily beyond this flash in the pan even as I read on.

"It sounds mad, I know."

The writer actually admitted it.

"I'd explain details and things better if I saw you. May I come and see you? If so, please write to me here, where I shall be for the next ten days. I could get over to your father's place. This needn't commit you to anything. But if it is all off, don't write. If I don't hear from you within a week I shall know it was good-bye for good.—Yours, RICHARD WYNN."

Stupefied, I sat staring at his letter.

Now a proposal of marriage from almost any young man in this world would bring its special thrill to almost any girl. This, quite apart from whether she accepts it or refuses. Isn't that true, girls?

So it shows what a stupor of despair I was in that morning, when I tell you that only for a fleeting moment did I forget my troubles in the excitement of this Mr. Wynn's letter.

I sighed as I got up, feeling a little dizzy from my perch on the National Gallery steps, for St. Martin's Church clock showed half-past one, and it was time I started walking slowly back to that revolting office. I'd had no lunch, but lunch-time would be considered over by the time I had crawled down Whitehall again. Heavens! How I hated Whitehall, and wished that I never need set eyes upon ...

Here the quite wild idea sprang into my mind.

"What about this way out of it? What if this were what I was longing for, the chance of a completely new life? Something to whisk me right away out of everything that I knew in the days of Harry! Here's this Mr. Richard Wynn—who was quite a nice young man, if I could only remember his face a little bit more distinctly—asking to marry me. What if I said 'Yes'? Since I was not to marry Harry, what did it matter what sort of a man I did marry? But what was he like?"

Frowning, I tried to remember. Dark, tall, Norfolk jacket, loved dogs—that was as far as I got. Not a detail of his face could I recall! An unawakened girl-child, as I was seven years ago, takes scant notice of masculine faces. All she thinks of them is "How ugly they are; how very unlike the people in books that the beautiful ladies are always falling in love with"—and that's the summing-up of it for her, until she is seventeen or so. (Unless she's of the type of my little chum Elizabeth, who at twenty-one continued to hold this view.)

But what about this Richard Wynn, who at nineteen had seemed a century older than I?

Nowadays, I should not consider as a grown-up man that youth who'd devoured such platefuls of cold mutton and bread and cheese at my father's table. I wondered listlessly how he'd grown up. Quite cold-bloodedly—for remember what I was going through—I began to debate whether I'd say I would see him. It might be better than the office; better than living exactly the same life day after day, without Harry. And Harry would hear if I got engaged.

How many engagements, I wonder, are entered into in the mood in which I was at that darkest of moments?

I thought, "If I write——"

Then my thoughts were broken into by something very different.

I'd already noticed, while only half-seeing it, that a little crowd had collected down in Trafalgar Square about the spot where the Tank Bank stood in the spring, a crowd composed of Colonial soldiers, of bare-headed factory girls from Charing Cross Road, of girl clerks from the countless Government offices round about.

Without much interest I glanced over the stone coping. Above the heads of the thickening crowd I saw a banner. It was white, with the scarlet-lettered motto:

"England Must Be Fed."

There was a group on the small raised platform beneath it, an elderly man in a frock-coat, some ladies, and the gleam of a light smock. Some one was speaking underneath that flag. In the sultry midday air I suddenly heard, fresh and clear, a girlish voice. These were the scraps that came to me:

"I appeal to you girls in this crowd. Some of you are country-born girls, like me. I'm from Wales. My county was a green county. It is now a red county—ploughed up to help carry on the war. But must we look at these fields full of crops and think, 'These will rot in the ground because there will never be hands enough to carry them in'?"

Ah! Land Army!

I'd heard of this before, and now Trafalgar Square saw girls being recruited as, three years ago, it saw young men being asked why they were not in khaki.

Then the speaker's young voice rose earnestly to my listless ears:

"I have put before you the disadvantages of this life. Long hours. Hard work. Poor pay. After you get your board and lodging a shilling a day, perhaps. Very poor pay. But, girls—our boys at the Front are offering their lives for just that. Won't you offer your services for that—and for them?"

The voice attracted me, the Welsh voice that holds the secret of being clear, yet soft, with the ends of its words pronounced as crisply as by a well-trained singer. It held me, that voice, while the speaker touched on the urgent need of workers to fill the places of men, who had gone from farm, field, dairy and byre.

Ah, the charming picture that she made! A bright, sturdy flower of girlhood set against-the parched stone-work of Town! She wore the Land Girl's uniform that sets off a woman's shape as no other costume has done yet. Under her slouch-hat her face was vividly brown and rose-coloured, with dark eyes alight. Her fresh, light belted smock, with its green armlet and scarlet crown, looked cool as well as trim.

The sight of her, I thought, should bring in as many recruits as the speech. She looked as if she'd never dreamt of such things as unventilated offices, typewriters that clicked mechanically all day, nervous headaches, lives soured and blighted at twenty-two! Enviously I glanced at her. Suddenly—was it my imagination?—she looked straight back at me over the heads of the crowd. It was to me she seemed to be speaking now.

"You are offered some good things in this new life, girls. Good health. Good sleep——"

Here I smiled bitterly. Good sleep.... I'd had a whole fortnight of hideously broken nights.

"There's no sleep like that of the worker on the land!" declared the recruiting land girl.

"Another thing you're offered is a good conscience with which to meet those lads when they return from fighting for you. Lastly—though I don't know if it's worth mentioning, really"—here her white teeth flashed in a merry smile across her rosy face—"you are offered a good complexion!"

Then something else unexpected happened. She jumped lightly down, and it was first of all to me—me!—that she made her way.

Straight up to me she came. She looked me full in the face, smiled prettily, and in that clear voice that sounded home-like to me because my home had been where she, too, came from, she said:

"I've been watching you all the time I've been speaking. I want to say something to you."

"You want to speak to me?" I said, surprised.

"I noticed you at once," said the Land Girl. "You looked—well, not very pleased with life."

Here a passer-by glanced at the contrast we made standing there: Government office clerk and Land Girl. She, in smock and breeches, radiated rosy health; I, wearing my blue costume, Frenchy blouse, flower-wreathed hat and Louis-heeled shoes, wilted in limpness and pallor.

She said prettily:

"Are you on war-work of any kind?"

"Yes, I am. I work at——" I gave her the rabbit-warren's real name.

Her bright face fell.

"What a pity. We're told not to try for recruits who are engaged in other departments. I was going to ask you to join up for the Land Army."

"I was going to ask you to join up for the Land Army"

"I! Oh, I should be no earthly good at that sort of thing," I assured her pettishly, I'm afraid. "I must get back to the office."

"A pity," remarked the fair recruiter regretfully. "Perhaps you've a friend who's not so busy. Would you pass these on?"

I took the leaflets she offered.

"Good-bye," she said. Once out of sight of that energetic young worker, I rolled her papers into a ball and tossed them into a county council waste-paper bin.

That is, I thought I did.

My head ached so desperately that I hardly knew what I was doing by the time I got out of the glare of Whitehall and into the gloom of the office.

I was before Mr. Winter, the chief who disliked me as much as he disliked open windows. Here was my chance to let in an apology for a breath of air. I tugged at the window. It was stiff. Down it came at last. But the effort had been too much for me in my run-down state; it made me feel positively sick.

Then came the last straw.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Mr. Winter rasped out behind me:

"Can't you keep that window shut?"

I jumped violently—think of the morning I'd had. I forgot myself.

"Don't shout at——" I began. But all in an instant the office became dark as night. I threw out my hands. Then I pitched forward on my face, knowing no more.

I had fainted dead away.

Half an hour later I was sent home, after Mr. Winter had leapt at his chance of telling me that I was obviously not strong enough for war-work, and that I need not present myself at these offices any more. Perhaps he was scarcely justified. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me into an appeal. But I didn't say a word, I was too dazed.

Sacked!

Well, after that, I thought, there was only one thing for me to do.

CHAPTER III
THE TOSS-UP

"And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss."—KIPLING.

"Elizabeth! What should you say if I were to accept an offer of marriage?" I demanded abruptly.

This was after I'd got back to the flat, had flung myself down on my bed with the announcement that I'd been sacked from the rabbit-warren, and had turned thirstily to the tea that my chum had brought in at once.

Washed-out, I lay against the pillow, while Elizabeth did the ministering angel in a boyish shirt, and with thick black locks "bobbed" about her square-chinned little face.

Elizabeth is the most loyal pal who ever barked out home-truths at a chum, waiting on her hand and foot the while ... Oh, girl-friends! What would life be without them when men forsake us by desertion and death, when other men overwork us and harry us, and when all men (as it sometimes seems) misunderstand us! Men don't believe in loyal and lasting friendships between women. Elizabeth, in return, never believed much in men.

"Offer of marriage?" she retorted. "What are you raving about?"

Between sips of tea I gave her the story of the letter that I had taken away unopened that morning.

"Asks me to write within the week, unless it was to be good-bye for good!" I concluded. "What do you think of it?"

"Shell-shock," Elizabeth promptly suggested. "Poor fellow! Must be quite off his head. How long was he out at the Front, Joan?"

"How should I know? I only know he wrote from those barracks."

"You don't know his regiment or anything?"

"Not a thing. Not the colour of his eyes, or why he never wrote to me before, or where he's been for the last seven years, or what doing. Absolutely nothing do I know about him. Except that he wants me to be his wife!"

My stupor of the morning had given way to a reaction of bravado; I laughed into Elizabeth's little steady face.

"Knew you weren't serious," she said. "I'm glad you're bucking up, though. It's quite a mercy that you have got the sack. You'd have had to go home and take things easy for a bit in any case, so——"

Here I interrupted her with more vigour than I'd felt capable of all day.

"Go home?" I echoed, really nettled. "D'you imagine that I'm going home after this? Not much! Go home! Go back to——" I took a long breath to underline the words—"to Agatha?"

Now, Agatha was my young stepmother.

Nobody could find fault with Agatha. She was sensible, quiet, admirably domesticated, a splendid needlewoman and parish worker, an excellent wife to Dad, and always tactful towards his grown-up children. Only—well, Agatha was a person who never made a mistake in her life. And the people who do make headstrong, passionate, idiotic mistakes—well, is it to that sort of person that they turn when they're in trouble? I ask you.

Elizabeth shook her cropped head. She had to see it.

"What will you do, then? Try for another job in town, I suppose?"

"Oh, I don't care what I do!" I said wearily. "There aren't many things I can do. Marrying this young man is one of them, anyway. Why shouldn't I? All marriage is a ghastly risk. Especially when a girl knows she can never, never care for anybody."

It was here that Elizabeth, that good chum, took me fairly in hand.

"I'll talk now," she said. "You listen." And she began to talk coolly and helpfully and like a dose of bromide, which was what I needed at that point.

"You said there weren't many things you could do. Home's off. You're not rich enough to do nothing, so you must do something. That means you either marry for a job—lots of girls do, poor wretches—or take one. I suppose your precious Winter isn't too chilly to give you a reference?"

"I daresay he's warmer now he's got that window shut!" I answered languidly.

"Then you're left with the choice of doing a sensible thing or a silly one," Elizabeth declared. "You go into another Government office, or you marry this man, who may drink or squint or have a beard for all you know."

"He used not to," I murmured with my eyes closed.

"Oh, you do remember so much about him? I say, could I see his letter?"

"Of course. Rummage in my bag for it, will you?—but I've told you all that was in it."

"I'd like to see the writing," said Elizabeth, rummaging. Presently I heard her say "Hullo!" in a more alert voice. I opened my eyes interested—Elizabeth was scanning a paper. It was headed:—

"Women's Land Army."

"I thought I threw those things away," said I. "Can't you find the letter?"

"No," said Elizabeth. "No other letter here."

Instantly I realized what I had done.

"It was Mr. Wynn's letter that I threw away," I exclaimed dismayed. "Address and all. I thought it was those pamphlets. How silly of me! Now I can't write to Mr. Wynn!"

"That settles that," said the practical Elizabeth, "and leaves you to take another Government office job or——"

She paused for emphasis, looked straight at me. "Or this!"

Here she waved the paper she'd been studying. It showed pictures of smiling girls in smocks and breeches, busy. They were making butter, they were stacking fodder, they were feeding baby calves out of buckets. Underneath the photographs was written:

"Will YOU do this?"

I stared at Elizabeth.

"Join the Land Army! Me!"

"Yes, you. Do your bit. They say England wants feeding. It looks like it"—she glanced at the comfortless tray—"so go and help, Joan."

"Would you like to, yourself?" I retorted.

"Me?" cried Elizabeth in turn. "Nothing would induce me, thanks. I should loathe it!"

"Yet you think I ought to join up!"

"Best thing for you," declared my chum briskly. "Help your country, work in the open, get fit, and forget there are such things as men!"

"All very well for you to talk in that gay and airy way about 'forgetting,'" I retorted, nettled again. "You wait——! If ever your time comes——"

"Ha!" jeered Elizabeth, putting back her bonnie little head of a page, and squaring her shoulders. "If——!"

She looked like the Princess of that fairy-tale on whom the fairies laid a curse that she should never marry a man she loved because, on her bridal night, she herself would be turned into a lad.

"Stranger things have happened," I threatened her, "than a girl like you falling in love in the end."

"Yes. A girl like you getting over it. That's happened before now," retorted the downright little Man-hater. "Now, what about this Land Army idea?"

"But—but I should hate every minute of it!" I objected.

"Worse than marrying the wrong person?" murmured Elizabeth.

Here an odd thing happened. At those words "the wrong person" there flashed into my mind for the first time the thought that has visited it, ah! how often since then, in spite of Harry, in spite of my not caring what happened now. In spite of everything, it struck me, "If I never hear anything more about this Mr. Wynn, it will be a pity." Yes, at the time I felt that.

"What a toss-up everything is," I said recklessly. "Shall I go to work in breeches and a smock? Or shall I get married? Heads or tails? Have you a penny, Elizabeth?"

"Don't be silly."

"I mean it. Have you a penny?"

"Put my last into the gas meter!"

"Then I'll try this." I took up the remaining dry biscuit from the bread platter. "England must be fed," I quoted. "Heads I go and help to feed her. Tails I marry for a job. Heads is the side with the maker's name on. Now!"

I spun the biscuit into the air. Gambling with England's food!

It came down, spun on the empty platter, fell flat.

With quite a thrill I bent to see the result of my toss.

"Heads!"

"Land Army!" cried Elizabeth, throwing up her head. "We're for it!"

I turned to her.

"We?"

"Looks like it! Suppose I've got to join up with you," grumbled my chum, who was always better than her word, "and see what comes!"

* * * * * * *

A fortnight later we were both glancing at the set of our new Land Army hats in the narrow strip of mirror of a railway carriage, bound for the countryside.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST NIGHT IN CAMP

"Why did I leave my little back-room in Bloomsbury?"—VICTORIAN SONG.

Transformation scene.

From a London office to a Land Girls' Camp in Mid-Wales. From a cramped, sixth-story flat looking down on slums to that big light hut set among the woods that peeped a green "welcome" in at the many windows.

Every window was wide open on that first evening when Elizabeth and I got down to the camp.

Our first impressions of it? Well! I can only say we were not "out" to be encouraged, or to like anything at all at that moment! Tired, stiff from our journey, awkward in our unfamiliar uniform and heavy boots, we followed the young forewoman who'd met us at the tiny station called "Careg," and had piloted us up and down what seemed interminable miles of lanes to this hut.

A queer, surprisingly ugly place, this long bare building! Corrugated iron without, matchboarding within, with bare floors, trestle tables, and kitchen-chairs. It had been intended for a parish hall for meetings and sales of work; but the platform had been taken away, and the whole building turned into a barracks for girl-workers. Land Army slouch hats and brown raincoats hung from the pegs, gay-coloured prints were pinned upon the unvarnished walls, and flowers stood about in glass jam-jars.

The place resounded with laughter and talk. It was clustered with Camp-ites, who wore the same rig as our own. We still felt as if we were in fancy-dress. But these other light smocks and laced-up leggings and hobnailed boots all bore the signs of honest wear and tear from the work for which they were designed.

These girls had "worked themselves and their clothes in" to the new job. On that first evening they looked to us a race apart. They made me feel a nervous and apologetic weed! They were a bewildering crowd.

"Now, you girls! Make a bit of room at this end of the table," ordered the forewoman cheerily. "Here are the two new workers for the training depot. They're to live here."

Faces turned from each side of the long mess-table towards us. The babel of talk died down. There was a scraping of chairs on the scrubbed floor. A girl jumped up and fetched cups; another pushed aside one of the glass gallipots that held sheaves of blue-bells and marsh-yellows all down the table.

"That's right. You sit here, will you? Room for a little one!"—the little one being Elizabeth, who seemed to have shrunk since she put on breeches, into some small, shock-headed, pale and defensive boy. "And you, Vic, look after this other one."

"What's your name?" from the forewoman.

"Matthews? Joan Matthews! Sit down, Joan; have your tea. There's plenty more milk in the big jug; and pass up that bit of rhubarb pie for them. They're all the way from London."

"London!" chorused the girls at the table in a variety of voices.

"London, fancy!"

"Eustern! All change! Stand clear o' the gates!" sang out one, in gruff imitation. "Air-raid shelter this way! Full up, full up! Pass along there."

"Piccadilly, theatres and shops!"

"Bond-street!"

"'Igh-street!"

"Dear old giddy London!"

"Bit of a change to Careg Camp, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," I admitted, and in the breezy laughter my voice was drowned, also my heartfelt sigh.

For a sudden wave of regret swept over the whole of my tired being. I wondered what had possessed me to leave London. It was going to be awful! Why had I been so mad as to fill up those forms which that girl had given me in Trafalgar Square, and to make those inquiries, and to attend that Selection Committee and that Medical Board?

Why had I let Elizabeth—who was looking gloomy enough on her side of the table—persuade me to take this silly step? Why on earth did I join the Land Army for twelve months, agreeing to go wherever I was sent? Here they'd sent us into the wilds of the country—hundreds of miles away from every soul we knew, into this bare barn of a place and this mob of strange girls!

There! Now one of them who'd finished tea sprang up—sprang as if it were the beginning instead of the end of a working day—went to the piano at the other end of the hall, and began to rattle out gay music; and then two others were jumping up, too, taking each other by the hands in a clear space of the room and swinging into a two-step—dancing! After they'd been working on a farm-course all day!

They were all so bursting with "go" and chattering spirits that I felt I could never cope with them. Never should I make friends! Never should I attain to anything they could do! Never accustom myself to the strangeness of all this!

Here I was, a fish out of water. Even if I were miserable in London, it's better to be wretched in a place that you're used to, and where you're not expected to make any unwonted efforts, or to be bothered by fresh people. Yes! Would to goodness I'd stuck it in London, instead of rushing out of that frying-pan into this fire.

Absolutely "out of it all" and miserable, I expect my thoughts showed in my face as I sat there. For a bright-eyed girl opposite, with riotous red hair and a rounded throat starred with freckles, leaned across, smiled, and remarked in the deep, soft contralto of Southern Wales:

"Sure to feel strange at first! Longing for home. I was the first ten days. Oh, I would have bought myself out and packed up. I would, indeed——" she paused, and turned to the girl sitting beside me. "But they won't want to get back to town after they've been here a bit, will they, Vic?"

The big dark Land Girl "Vic," who sat next to me, showed all her white teeth in a large and friendly grin.

"Ah, you'll be all right. You wait till you've stopped down here a couple of weeks, Celery-face, and your own boy won't know you again!" she assured me in a ringing Cockney accent that set all the others laughing delightedly.

How popular she seemed! Good-natured, too. Presently I found her taking Elizabeth and me under her wing while the other girls went on with their various occupations.

None of them seemed to want to fling herself down and rest, doing absolutely nothing—which was all I should feel fit for, I thought gloomily. From the scullery-shed outside the hut came the sound of clinking crockery and of laughter, as two of the girls washed up. Overpoweringly cheery young women! I thought, peevish with fatigue.

Vic's Cockney voice rose above the rest of the chatter, proffering encouragement and information.

"You'll be surprised!" she declared. "You won't want to leave, ever——"

Chill silence from us.

"You'll see it's a fine life when you get your hand in at the work," she continued, undaunted by our silence. "Tomorrow morning you start. I'll take you along to Mr. Price; he's the farmer at the Practice place. Oh, he's all right, Mr. Price is; and her, too. They won't be hard on you, seeing you've never worked before.... Oh! You have worked? ... Oh, in business. Ah! that's a lady's job. This other's all right, though. Don't you go telling 'em you know all about farming just because you've made hay once or twice on your holidays——"

"I wouldn't," I assured her.

"Oh! Well, I did. Talk about laugh ever since!" chuckled Vic. "Why, you don't know how much you don't know until you start in the Land Army! Why, one of the wounded Tommies from the hospital here says to me on the road just now, 'Are you on the land, miss?' I said, 'Well, I'm not on the sea!'"