“You don’t want to have much to do
with that fellow,” said Stannard,
when Bruce Fearing had gone on about
whatever business he had in hand.
“Why not?” Elliott’s tone was short.
She had wanted to hear what Bruce was
going to say.
“Oh, he is all right, enough, I guess, but
nobody knows where he came from. He
and that Pete brother of his are no relations
of ours, or of Aunt Jessica’s either.”
“How does he happen to be living here,
then?”
“Search me. Some kind of a pick-up,
I gathered. Nobody talks much about it.
They take him as a matter of course. All
64
right enough for them, if they want to,
but they really ought to warn strangers.
A fellow would think he was—er—all
right, you know.”
Stannard’s words made Elliott very uncomfortable.
She thought the reason they
disquieted her was that she had rather
liked Bruce Fearing, and now to have him
turn out a person whom she couldn’t be as
friendly with as she wished was disconcerting.
It was only another point in her
indictment of life on the Cameron farm;
one couldn’t tell whom one was knowing.
But she determined to sound Laura, which
would be easy enough, and Stannard’s
charge might prove unfounded.
But sounding Laura was not easy,
chiefly for the reason Stannard had
shrewdly deduced, that the Robert Camerons
took Peter and Bruce Fearing in quite
as matter-of-fact a way as they took themselves.
Laura even failed to discover that
she was being sounded.
“Who is this ‘Pete’ you’re always talking
about?” Elliott asked.
“Bruce’s older brother—I almost said
ours.” The two girls were skimming currants,
Laura with the swift skill of accustomed
fingers, Elliott more slowly. “He
is perfectly fine. I wish you could know
him.”
“I gathered he was Bruce’s brother.”
“He’s not a bit like Bruce. Pete is
short and dark and as quick as a flash.
You’d know he would make a splendid
aviator. There was a letter in the ‘Upton
News’ last night from an Upton doctor
who is over there, attached now to our
boys’ camp; did you see it? He says Bob
and Pete are ‘the acknowledged aces’ of
their squadron. That shows we must
have missed some of their letters. The
last one from Bob was written just after
he had finished his training.”
“This—Pete went from here?”
“He and Bob were in Tech together,
66
juniors. They enlisted in Boston, and
they’ve kept pretty close tabs on each
other ever since. They had their training
over here in the same camps. In France,
Pete got into spirals first, ‘by a fluke,’ as
he put it; Bob was unlucky with his landings.
But, some way or other, Bob seems
to have beaten him to the actual fighting.
Now they’re in it together.” And Laura
smiled and then sighed, and the nimble
fingers stopped work for a minute, only
to speed faster than ever.
“I haven’t read you any of their letters,
have I? Or Sid’s either? (Sidney
is my twin, you know. He is at Devens.)
But I will. If anything, Pete’s are funnier
than Bob’s. Both the boys have an
eye to the jolly side of things. Sometimes
you wouldn’t think there was anything
to flying but a huge lark, by the way
they write. But there was one letter of
Pete’s (it was to Mother), written from
their first training-camp in France after
67
one of the boys’ best friends had been
killed. Pete was evidently feeling sober,
but oh, so different from the way any one
would have felt about such a thing before
the war began! There was plenty of fun
in the letter, too, but toward the end, Pete
told about this Jim Stone’s death, and he
said: ‘It has made us all pretty serious,
but nobody’s blue. Jim was a splendid
fellow, and a chap can’t think he has
stopped as quick as all that. Mother
Jess, do you remember my talking to you
one Sunday after church, freshman vacation,
about the things I didn’t believe in?
Why didn’t you tell me I was a fool? You
knew it then, and I know it now.’ That’s
Pete all over. It made Mother and me
very happy.”
Elliott felt rather ashamed to continue
her probing. “Have they always lived
with you,” she asked, “the Fearings?”
“Oh, yes, ever since I can remember.
Isn’t Bruce splendid? I don’t know how
68
we could have got on at all this summer
without Bruce.”
Then Elliott gave up. If a mystery existed,
either Laura didn’t know of it, or
she had forgotten it, or else she considered
it too negligible to mention.
The girl found that for some reason she
did not care to ask Stannard the source
of his information. Would Bruce himself
prove communicative? There could be no
harm in finding out. Besides, it would
tease Stannard to see her talking with
“that fellow,” and Elliott rather enjoyed
teasing Stannard. And didn’t she owe
him something for a dictatorial interruption?
The thing would require manœuvering.
You couldn’t talk to Bruce Fearing, or to
any one else up here, whenever you felt
like it; he was far too busy. But on
the hill at sunset Elliott found her
chance.
“I think Aunt Jessica,” she remarked,
69
“is the most wonderful woman I’ve ever
seen.”
A glow lit up Bruce’s quiet gray eyes.
“Mother Jess,” he said, “is a miracle.”
“She is so terrifically busy, and yet she
never seems to hurry; and she always has
time to talk to you and she never acts
tired.”
“She is, though.”
“I suppose she must be, sometimes. I
like that name for her, ‘Mother Jess.’
Your—aunt, is she?”
“Oh, no,” said Bruce, simply. “I’ve no
Cameron or Fordyce blood in me, or any
other pedigreed variety. My corpuscles
are unregistered. She and Father Bob
took Pete and me in when I was a baby
and Pete was a mere toddler. I was born
in the hotel down in the town there,—Am I
boring you?”
“No, indeed!” Elliott had the grace
to blush at the ease with which she was
carrying on her investigation.
He wondered why she flushed, but went
on quietly. “Our own mother died there
in the hotel when I was a week old and we
didn’t seem to have any kin. At least,
they never showed up. Mother was evidently
a widow; Mother Jess got that from
her belongings. She stopped overnight at
Highboro, and I was born there. She
hadn’t told any one in the hotel where she
was going. Registered from Boston, but
nobody could be found in Boston who knew
of her. The authorities were going to
send Pete and me to some kind of a capitalized
Home, when Mother Jess stepped
in. She hadn’t enough boys, so she said.
Bob and Laura and Sid were on deck.
Henry and Tom came along later. Fordyce
was the one that died; he’d just
slipped out. Mother Jess was feeling
lonely, I guess. Anyway, she took us
two; said she thought we’d be better off
on the farm than in a Home and she
needed us—bless her! Do you wonder
71
Pete and I swear by the Camerons?”
“No,” said Elliott. “Indeed I don’t.”
She had what she had been angling for, in
good measure, but she rather wished she
hadn’t got it, after all. “Haven’t you
had any clue in all these years as to who
your people were?”
“Not the slightest. I’m willing to let
things rest as they are.”
“Yes, of course,” thought Elliott,
“but—” She let it go at “but.” Oughtn’t
somebody, as Stannard said, to have
warned her? These boys’ people might
have been very common persons, not at all
like Camerons. The fact that no relatives
appeared proved that, didn’t it? Every
one who was any one at all had a family.
Bruce did not look common: his gray eyes
and his broad forehead and his keen, thin
face were almost distinguished, and his
manners were above criticism. But one
never could tell. And hadn’t he been
brought up by Camerons? The very
72
openness with which he had told his story
had something fine about it. He, like
Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.
Well, was there? Elliott could quite
clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret,
Stannard’s mother, would say to that
question. She had never especially cared
for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at
Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her
familiar world began to totter. Actually,
she could think of no particularly good
reason why, when she had heard his story,
she should proceed to shun him. His history
simply didn’t seem to matter, except
to make her sorry for him; and yet she
couldn’t be really sorry for a boy who had
been brought up by Aunt Jessica.
Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmosphere
was already beginning to work.
“I think you and your brother had luck,”
she said.
“I know we did,” answered Bruce.
Elliott turned the conversation. “I
wish you could tell me what you were going
to say, when we were interrupted yesterday,
about a person’s having no choice
except how he will do things—you having
had only that kind of choice.”
“I remember,” said Bruce. “Well, for
one thing, I suppose I could get grouchy,
if I chose, over not knowing who my people
were.”
“They may have been very splendid,”
said Elliott.
Bruce smiled. “It’s not likely.”
“In that case,” she countered, “you have
the satisfaction of not knowing who they
were.”
“Exactly. But that’s rather a crawl,
isn’t it? Of course, a fellow would like
to know.”
The boy bent forward, and, with painstaking
care, selected a blade from a tuft of
grass growing between his feet. He nibbled
a minute before he spoke again.
“See here, I’m going to tell you something
I haven’t told a soul. I’m crazy to
go to the war. Sometimes it seems as
though I couldn’t stay home. When
Pete’s letters come I have to go away somewhere
quick and chop wood! Anything to
get busy for a while.”
“Aren’t you too young? Would they
take you?”
“Take me? You bet they’d take me!
I’m eighteen. Don’t I look twenty?”
The girl’s eye ran critically over the
strong young body, with its long, supple,
sinewy lines. “Yes,” she nodded. “I
think you do.”
“They’d take me in a minute, in aviation
or anything else.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Who’d help Father Bob through the
farm stunts? Young Bob’s gone, and
Pete and Sidney. They were always here
for the summer work. Henry’s a fine lad,
75
but a boy still. Tom’s nothing but a boy,
though he does his bit. As for the Women’s
Land Army, it’s got up into these
parts, but not in force. Father Bob can’t
hire help: it’s not to be had. That’s why
Mother Jess and the girls are going in so
for farm work. They never did it before
this year, except in sport. We have
more land under cultivation this summer
than ever before, and fewer hands to
harvest it with. But Mother and the girls
sha’n’t have to work harder than they’re
doing now, if I can help it. Could I go
off and leave them, after all they’ve done
for me? But that’s not it, either—gratitude.
They’re mine, Father Bob and
Mother Jess are, and the rest; they’re my
folks. You’re not exactly grateful to
your own folks, you know. They belong
to you. And you don’t leave what belongs
to you in the lurch.”
“No,” said Elliott. With awakened
76
eyes she was watching Bruce. No boy
had ever talked of such things to her before.
“So you’re not going?”
“Not of my own will. Of course, if the
war lasts and I’m drafted, or the help
problem lightens up, it will be different.
Pete’s gone. It was Pete’s right to go.
He’s the elder.”
“But you are choosing,” Elliott cried
earnestly. “Don’t you see? You’re
choosing to stay at home and—” words
came swiftly into her memory—“‘fight it
out on these lines all summer.’”
Bruce’s smile showed that he recognized
her quotation, but he shook his head.
“Choosing? I haven’t any choice—except
being decent about it. Don’t you see
I can’t go? I can only try to keep from
thinking about not going.”
“You being you,” said the girl, and she
spoke as simply and soberly as Bruce himself,
though her own warmth surprised
her, “I see you can’t go. But was that all
77
you meant”—her voice grew ludicrously
disappointed—“by a person’s having a
choice only of how he will do a thing?
There’s nothing to that but making the
best of things!”
Bruce Fearing threw back his head and
laughed heartily.
“You’re the funniest girl I’ve ever
seen.”
“Then you can’t have seen many. But
is there?”
“Perhaps not. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “I’m afraid it is.
And frightfully old. I was hoping you
were going to tell me something new and
exciting.”
The boy chuckled again. “Nothing so
good as that. Besides, I’ve a hunch the
exciting things aren’t very new, after all.”
Elliott went to sleep that night, if not
any happier, at least more interested. She
had looked deep into the heart of a boy,
different, it appeared, from any boy that
78
she had ever known; and something loyal
and sturdy and tender she had seen there
had stirred her. It was odd how well acquainted
she felt with him; odd, too, how
curious she was to know him better, even
though he hadn’t the least idea who his
grandfather had been. “Bother his
grandfather!” Elliott chuckled to realize
how such a sentiment would horrify Aunt
Margaret. Grandfathers were very important
to Aunt Margaret and Aunt Margaret’s
children. Grandfathers had always
seemed fairly important to Elliott
herself until now. Was it their relative
unimportance in the Robert Camerons’ estimation,
or a pair of steady gray eyes,
that had altered her valuation? The girl
didn’t know and she was keen enough to
know that she didn’t; keen enough, too,
to perceive that the change in her estimation
of grandfathers applied to a single
case only and might be merely temporary.
However that might be, she was not
79
ready yet to do anything so inherently distasteful
as make the best of what she
didn’t like, especially when nobody but
herself and two boys would know it.
When one makes the best of things, one
likes to do it to crowded galleries, that perceive
what is going on and applaud. The
Robert Camerons, Elliott was quite sure,
wouldn’t applaud. They would take it as
a matter of course, just as they took her
as a matter of course. They were quite
charming about it, as delightful hosts as
one could wish—if only they lived differently!—but
Elliott wasn’t used to being
taken for granted. She might have been
these new cousins’ own sort, for any difference
she could detect in their actions.
They didn’t seem to begin to understand
her importance. Perhaps she wasn’t so
important, after all. The doubt had never
before entered her mind.
The fact was, of course, that among
these busy, efficient people she was feeling
80
quite useless; and she didn’t like to
appear incompetent when she knew herself
to be, in her own line, a thoroughly
able person. But it irked her to think
that she had been forced into a position
where in self-defense she must either acquire
a kind of efficiency she didn’t want
or do without. At the same time it troubled
her lest this reluctance become apparent.
For they were all loves and she
wouldn’t hurt their feelings for worlds.
And she did wish them to admire her.
But she had a feeling that they didn’t altogether,
not even Priscilla and Bruce.
Nevertheless, the next day when Laura
asked whether she would take her book out
to the hay-field or stay where she was on
the porch, Elliott looked up from “Lorna
Doone” and said, with the prettiest little
coaxing air, “If I go, will you let me pitch
hay?” And Laura answered as lightly,
“Certainly.” “I don’t believe you,” said
81
Elliott. “You may ride on the hay-load,”
smiled Laura. “That won’t do at all,”
Elliott shook her head. “If I can’t pitch
hay, I’ll stay here.” Laura laughed and
said: “You certainly will be more comfortable
here. I can’t quite see you pitching
hay.” And Elliott retorted: “You
don’t know what I could do, if I tried.
But since you won’t let me try—”
It was all smiling and gay, but it was a
crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that
Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed.
Wasn’t Stannard’s frank shirking better
than her camouflaged variety? But
hadn’t she picked berries all the morning
in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun,
until she felt as red as a berry and much
less fresh and sweet?
“It’s a shame,” said Laura, “that this
is just our busy season; but you know you
have to make hay while the sun shines.
Father thinks we can finish the lower
82
meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we
begin cutting on the hill. It’s really fun
to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the
rake, though now and then I pitch for
variety.”
She looked so strong and brown and
merry, as she talked, that Elliott, comfortably
established with “Lorna Doone,” felt
almost like flinging her book into the next
chair, slipping her arm through Laura’s,
and crying, “Lead on!” But she remembered
just in time that, as she hadn’t
wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it
would ill become her to have a good time
there. Which may seem like a childish
way of looking at the thing, but isn’t really
confined to children at all.
So the hay-makers tramped away down
the road, their laughter floating cheerfully
back over their shoulders; and Elliott sat
on the big shady veranda and read her
book.
She might have enjoyed it less had she
83
heard Henry’s frank summary at the turn
of the lane, when his father inquired the
whereabouts of Stannard.
“Beau Brummell hiked over to Upton
half an hour ago. I offered him the other
Henry, but he doesn’t seem to care to
drive anything short of a Pierce-Arrow.
Twins, aren’t they?” and Henry nodded
in the direction of the veranda.
“Sh-h!” reproved Laura. “They’re
our guests.”
“Guests is just it. Yes, they’re guests,
all right.”
“Mother says they don’t know how to
work,” Priscilla observed.
“That’s another true word, too.”
Mother turned gaily in the road ahead.
“Who is talking about me?” she called.
Priscilla frisked on to join her, and
Henry fell back to a confidential exchange
with Laura. “Beau wouldn’t be so bad if
he could forget for a minute that he owned
the earth and had a mortgage on the solar
84
system. But when he tries to snub Bruce—gee,
that gets me!”
“Aren’t you twanging the G string
rather often lately, Hal?—Stannard can’t
snub Bruce. Bruce isn’t the kind of fellow
to be snubbed.”
“Just the same, it makes me sick to think
anybody’s a cousin to me that would try
it.”
Laura switched back to the main subject.
“We didn’t ask them up here as extra
farm hands, you know.”
“Bull’s-eye,” said Henry, and grinned.
What she did not know failed to trouble
Elliott. She read on in lonely peace
through the afternoon. At a most exciting
point the telephone rang. Four, that
was the Cameron call. Elliott went into
the house and took down the receiver.
“Mr. Robert Cameron’s,” she said pleasantly.
“S-say!” stuttered a high, sharp voice,
“my little b-b-boys have let your c-c-cows
85
out o’ the p-p-pasture. I’ll g-give ’em a
t-t-trouncin’, but ’t won’t git your c-c-cows
back. They let ’em out the G-G-Garrett
Road, and your medder gate’s open. Jim
B-B-Blake saw it this mornin’! Why the
man didn’t shut it, I d-d-dunno. You’ll
have to hurry to save your medder.”
“But,” gasped Elliott, “I don’t understand!
You say the cows—”
“Are comin’ down G-Garrett Road,”
snapped the stuttering voice, “the whole
kit an’ b-b-bilin’ of ’em. They’ll be inter
your upper m-medder in five m-m-minutes.”
Over the wire came the click of a receiver
snapping back on its hook. Elliott
hung up and started toward the door. The
cows had been let out. Just why this incident
was so disastrous she did not quite
comprehend, but she must go and tell her
uncle. Before her feet touched the veranda,
however, she stopped. Five minutes?
Why, there wouldn’t be time to
86
go to the lower meadow, to say nothing of
any one’s doing anything about the situation.
And then, with breath-taking suddenness,
the thing burst on her. She was
alone in the house; even Aunt Jessica and
Priscilla had gone to the hay-field. The
situation, whatever it was, was up to her.
For a minute the girl leaned weakly
against the wall. Cows—there were
thirty in the herd—and she loathed cows!
She was afraid of cows. She knew nothing
about cows. She was never in the
slightest degree sure of what the creatures
might take it into their heads to do.
For a minute she stood irresolute. Then
something stirred in the girl, something
self-reliant and strong. Never in her life
had Elliott Cameron had to do alone anything
that she didn’t already know how to
do. Now for the first time she faced an
emergency on none but her own resources,
87
an emergency that was quite out of her
line.
Her brain worked swiftly as her feet
moved to the door. In reality, she had
wavered only a second. When Tom went
for the cows, didn’t he take old Prince?
There was just a chance that Prince
wasn’t in the hay-field. She ran down
the steps calling, “Prince! Prince!” The
old dog rose deliberately from his place
on the shady side of the barn and trotted
toward her, wagging his tail. “Come,
Prince!” cried Elliott, and ran out of the
yard.
Luckily, berrying had that very morning
taken her by a short cut to the vicinity
of the upper meadow. She knew the
way. But what was likely to happen?
Town-bred girl that she was, she had no
idea. A recollection of the smooth, upstanding
expanse of the upper meadow
gave her a clue. If the cows got into that
88
even erectness— She began to run,
Prince bounding beside her, his brown tail
a waving plume.
She could see the meadow now, a smooth
green sea ruffled by nothing heavier than
the light feet of the summer breeze. She
could see the great gate invitingly open to
the road and oh!—her heart stopped beating,
then pounded on at a suffocating pace—she
could see the cows! There they
came, down the hill, quite filling the narrow
roadway with their horrid bulk, making
it look like a moving river of broad
backs and tossing heads. What could she
do, the girl wondered; what could she do
against so many? She tried to run faster.
Somehow she must reach the gate first.
There was nothing even then, so far as she
knew, to prevent their trampling her down
and rushing over her into the waving
greenness, unless she could slam the gate
in their faces. You can see that she really
did not know much about cows.
But Prince knew them. Prince understood
now why his master’s guest had
summoned him to this hot run in the sunshine.
The prospect did not daunt Prince.
He ran barking to the meadow side of
the road. The foremost cow which, grazing
the dusty grass, had strayed toward
the gate, turned back into the ruts again.
Elliott pulled the gate shut, in her haste
leaving herself outside. There, too spent
to climb over, she flattened her slender
form against the gray boards, while,
driven by Prince, the whole herd, horns
tossing, tails switching, flanks heaving,
thudded its way past.
And there, three minutes later, Bruce,
dashing over the hill in response to a message
relayed by telephone and boy to the
lower meadow, found her.
“The cows have gone down,” Elliott told
him. “Prince has them. He will take
them home, won’t he?”
“Prince? Good enough! He’ll get the
90
cows home all right. But what are you
doing in this mix-up?”
“A woman telephoned the house,” said
Elliott. “I was afraid I couldn’t reach
any of you in time, so I came over myself.”
“You like cows?” The question shot
at her like a bullet.
The piquant nose wrinkled entrancingly.
“Scared to death of ’em.”
“I guessed as much.” The boy nodded.
“Gee whiz, but you’ve got good stuff in
you!”
And though her shoes were dusty and
her hair tousled, and though her knees
hadn’t stopped shaking even yet, Elliott
Cameron felt a sudden sense of satisfaction
and pride. She turned and looked
over the fence at the meadow. In its unmarred
beauty it seemed to belong to her.
“I think,” remarked Elliott, the next
morning, “that I will walk up and
watch the haying for a while.”
She had finished washing the separator
and the milk-pans. It had taken a full
hour the first morning; growing expertness
had already reduced the hour to three-quarters,
and she had hopes of further
reductions. She still held firmly to the
opinion that the process was uninteresting,
but an innate sense of fairness told her
that the milk-pans were no more than her
share. Of course, she couldn’t spend
six weeks in a household whose component
members were as busy as were this household’s
members, and do nothing at all.
92
That was the disadvantage in coming to
the place. She was bound to dissemble
her feelings and wash milk-pans. But if
she had to wash them, she might as well
do it well. There was no question about
that. If the actual process still bored the
girl, the results did not. Elliott was
proud of her pans, with a pride in which
there was no atom of indifference. She
scoured them until they shone, not because,
as she told herself, she liked to scour, but
because she liked to see the pans shine.
Aunt Jessica liked to see them shine, too.
She paused on her way through the
kitchen. “What beautiful pans! I can
see my face in every one of them.”
A glow of elation struck through Elliott.
Aunt Jessica was loving and sweet, but
she did not lavish commendation in quarters
where it was not due. Elliott knew
her pans were beautiful, but Aunt Jessica’s
praise made them doubly so.
It was then, as she hung up her towels,
93
that she made the remark about walking
up to the hill meadow. She had a notion
she would like to see the knives put
into that unbroken expanse of tall grass
for which she continued to feel a curious
responsibility. A mere appearance at the
field could not commit her to anything.
“If you are going up,” said Aunt Jessica,
“perhaps you will take some of these
cookies I have just baked. Gertrude has
made lemonade.”
That was one of the delightful things
about Aunt Jessica, Elliott thought: she
never probed beneath the surface of one’s
words, she never even looked curiosity,
and she gave one immediately a reason for
doing what one wished to do. Lemonade
and cookies made an appearance in the
hay-field the most natural thing in the
world.
The upper meadow proved a surprise.
Not its business—Elliott had expected
business, but its odd mingling of jollity
94
with activity. They all seemed to be having
such a good time about their work.
And yet the jollity did not in the least interfere
with the business, which appeared
to be going forward in a systematic and
efficient way that even an untrained girl
could not fail to notice. Elliott’s advent
would have occasioned little disturbance,
she suspected, had it not been for the cookies.
She was used by now to having no
fuss made over her. Laura waved a hand
from her seat behind the horses; the boys
swung their hats; Priscilla darted over to
display a ground-sparrow’s nest that the
scythes had disclosed.
It was Priscilla who discovered the
cookies and sent a squeal of delight across
the meadow. But even then the workers
did not pause. Priscilla had to dance out
across the mown grass and squeal again
and wave both hands, a cooky in one, a
cup in the other, and add a shrill little
yelp, “Come on! Come on, peoples! You
95
don’t know what we’ve got here,” before
they straggled over to what Henry called
“the refreshment booth.”
Then they were ready enough to notice
Elliott. Uncle Robert and the boys
cracked jokes, the girls chattered and
laughed, and every one called on her to
applaud the amount of work they had already
accomplished, exactly as though she
understood about such things.
And Elliott did applaud, reinforcing her
words with a whole battery of dimples, all
the while privately resolving that no contagion
of enthusiasm should inoculate her
with the haymaking germ. There were
factors that made it all a bit hard to withstand;
the sky was so blue, the breeze was
so jolly, the mown grass smelled so delicious,
and the mountain air had such zest
in it. But, on the other hand, the sun was
hot and downright and freckling; Priscilla’s
tip-tilted little nose was already liberally
besprinkled. If Laura hadn’t such
96
a wonderful skin, she would have been a
sight long ago, despite the wide brim of
her big straw hat. A mere farm hat, and
Laura looked like a mere husky farm girl,
as she guided her horses skilfully around
the field. How strong her arms must be!
But how could a girl with Laura’s intelligence
and high spirit and charm enjoy
putting all this time into haying? With
Priscilla, of course, matters stood differently.
Children never discriminate.
“No, I sha’n’t do that kind of thing,”
said Elliott, firmly. But she would investigate
the haymaking game, investigate it
coolly and dispassionately, to find out exactly
what it amounted to—aside, of
course, from an accumulation of dried
grass in barns. To this end, she invaded
the upper meadow a good many times, during
the next few days, took a turn on the
hay-rake, now and then helped load and
unload, riding down to the barn on a
mound of high-piled fragrance, and came
97
to the conclusion that, as an activity, haymaking
wasn’t to be compared with knocking
a ball back and forth across a net. To
try one’s hand at it might do well enough,
now and then, to spice an otherwise luxurious
life, but as a steady diet the thing was
too unrelenting. One was driven by wind
and sun; even the clouds took a hand in
cudgeling one on. A person must keep at
it whether she cared to or not—in actual
practice this point never troubled Elliott,
who always stopped when she wished to—there
were no spectators, and, heaviest demerit
of all, it was undeniably hard work.
But she was curious to discover what
Laura found in it, and you know Elliott
Cameron well enough by this time to understand
that she was not a girl who hesitated
to ask for information.
The last load had dashed into the big
red barn two minutes before a thunder-shower,
and Laura, freshly tubbed and
laundered, was winding her long black
98
braids around her shapely little head.
Elliott sat on the bed and watched her.
“Aren’t you glad it’s done?” she asked.
“The haying? Oh, yes, I’m always glad
when we have it safely in. But I love it.”
“Really? It isn’t work for girls.”
“No? Then once a year I’ll take a vacation
from being a girl. But that doesn’t
hold now, you know. Everything is work
for girls that girls can do, to help win this
war.”
“To help win the war?” echoed Elliott,
and blankly and suddenly shut her mouth.
Why, she supposed it did help, after all!
But it was their work, the kind of thing
they had always done, up here at the Cameron
Farm; only, as Bruce had assured her,
the girls hadn’t done much of it. Was
that what Bruce had meant, too?
“Why did you suppose we put so much
more land under cultivation this year than
we ever had before, with less help in
sight?” Laura questioned. “Just for fun,
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or for the money we could get out of it?”
“I hadn’t thought much about it,” said
Elliott. She was thinking now. Had she
been a bit of a slacker? She loathed
slackers.
“I never thought of it as war work,” she
said. “Stupid, wasn’t I?”
Laura put the last hair-pin in place.
“Just thought of it as our job, did you?
So it is, of course. But when your job
happens to be war work too—well, you
just buckle down to it extra hard. I’ve
never been so thankful as this year and
last that we have the farm. It gives every
one of us such a splendid chance to feel
we’re really counting in this fight—the
boys over there and in camp, the rest of
us here.” Laura’s dark eyes were beginning
to shine. “Oh, I wouldn’t be anywhere
but on a farm for anything in the
wide world, unless, perhaps, somewhere in
France!”
She stopped suddenly, put down the
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hand-mirror with which she was surveying
her back hair, and blushed. “There!”
she said, “I forgot all about the fact that
you weren’t born on a farm, too. But
then, you can share ours for a year, so I’m
not going to apologize for a word I’ve
said, even if I have been bragging because
I’m so lucky.”
Bragging because she was lucky! And
Laura meant it. There was not the ghost
of a pose in her frank, downright young
pride. Her cousin felt like a person who
has been walking down-stairs and tries to
step off a tread that isn’t there. Elliott’s
own cheeks reddened as she thought of the
patronizing pity she had felt. Luckily,
Laura hadn’t seemed to notice it. And
Laura was quick to see things, too. Elliott
realized, with a little stab of chagrin,
that Laura wouldn’t understand why her
cousin had pitied her, even if some one
should be at pains to explain the fact to
her.
But Elliott couldn’t let herself pass as
an intentional slacker.
“We girls did canteening at home; surgical
dressings and knitting, too, of course,
but canteening was the most fun.”
“That must have been fine.” Laura
was interested at once.
Elliott’s spirit revived. After all,
Laura was a country girl. “Do you have
a canteen here?”
“Oh, no, Highboro isn’t big enough.
No trains stop here for more than a minute.
We’re not on the direct line to any
of the camps, either.”
“Ours was a regular canteen,” said Elliott.
“They would telephone us when soldiers
were going through, and we would
go down, with Mrs. Royce or Aunt Margaret
or some other chaperon, and distribute
post-cards and cigarettes and
sweet chocolate; and ice-cream cones, if
the weather was hot. It was such fun to
talk to the men!”
“Ice-cream and cigarettes!” laughed
Laura. “I should think they’d have liked
something nourishing.”
“Oh, they got the nourishing things, if it
was time. The Government had an arrangement
with a restaurant just around
the corner to serve soldiers’ meals. We
didn’t have to do that.”
“You supplied the frills.”
“Yes.” Somehow Elliott did not quite
like the words.
Laura was quick to notice her discomfiture.
“I imagine they needed the frills
and the jollying, poor lonesome boys!
They’re so young, many of them, and not
used to being away from home; and the
life is strange, however well they may
like it.”
“Yes,” said Elliott. “More than one
bunch told us they hadn’t seen anything
to equal what we did for them this side of
New York. Our uniforms were so becoming,
too; even a plain girl looked cute
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in those caps. Why, Laura, you might
have a uniform, mightn’t you, if it’s war
work?”
“What should I want of a uniform?”
“People who saw you would know what
you’re doing.”
“They know now, if they open their
eyes.”
“They’d know why, I mean—that it’s
war work.”
“Mercy! Nobody around here needs to
be told why a person hoes potatoes these
days. They’re all doing it.”
“Do you hoe potatoes?” Elliott had no
notion how comically her consternation sat
on her pretty features.
Laura laughed at the amazed face of her
cousin. “Of course I do, when potatoes
need hoeing.”
“But do you like it?”
“Oh, yes, in a way. Hoeing potatoes
isn’t half bad.”
Elliott opened her lips to say that it
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wasn’t girls’ work, remembered that she
had made that remark once before, and
changed to, “It is hard work, and it isn’t
a bit interesting.”
Then Laura asked two questions that
left Elliott gasping. “Don’t you like to do
anything except what is easy? Though I
don’t know that it is any harder to hoe potatoes
for an hour than to play tennis that
length of time. And anything is interesting,
don’t you think, that has to be done?”
“Goodness, no!” ejaculated Elliott, when
she found her voice. “I don’t think that
at all! Do you, really?”
“Why, yes!” Laura laughed a trifle
deprecatingly. “I’m not bluffing. I
never thought I’d care to spray potatoes,
but one day it had to be done, and Father
and the boys were needed for something
else. It wasn’t any harder to do than
churning, and I found it rather fun to
watch the potato-bugs drop off. I calculated,
too, how many Belgians the potatoes
105
in those hills would feed, either directly or
by setting wheat free, you know. I forget
now how many I made it. I know I
felt quite exhilarated when I was through.
Trudy helped.”
“Goodness!” murmured Elliott faintly.
For a minute she could find no other words.
Then she managed to remark: “Of
course every one gardens at home. They
have lots at the country club, and raise
potatoes and things, and you hear them
talking everywhere about bugs and blight
and cold pack. I never paid much attention.
It didn’t seem to be meant for girls.
The men and boys raise the things and the
wives and mothers can them. That’s the
way we do at home.”
“Traditional,” nodded Laura. “We divide
on those lines here to a certain extent,
too; but we’re rather Jacks of all trades
on this farm. The boys know how to can
and we girls to make hay.”
“The boys can?”
“Tom put up all our string-beans
last summer quite by himself. What does
it matter who does a thing, so it’s
done?”
Laura was dressed now, from the crown
of her smooth black head to the tip of her
white canvas shoes, and a very satisfactory
operation she had made of it. Elliott dismissed
Laura’s last remark, which had not
sounded very sensible to her—of course it
mattered who did things; why, that sometimes
was all that did matter!—and reflected
that, country bred though she was,
her cousin Laura had an air that many a
town girl might have envied. An ability
to find hard manual work interesting did
not seem to preclude the knowledge of how
to put on one’s clothes.
But Laura’s hands were not all that
hands should be, by Elliott’s standard;
they were well cared for, and as white as
soap and water could make them, but there
are some things that soap and water cannot
107
do when it is pitted against sun and
wind and contact with soil and berries and
fruits. Elliott hadn’t meant to look so
fixedly at Laura’s hands as to make her
thought visible, and the color rose in her
cheeks when Laura said, exactly as though
she were a mind-reader, “If you prefer
lily-white fingers to stirring around doing
things, why, you have to sit in a corner
and keep them lily-white. I like to stick
mine into too many pies ever to have them
look well.”
“They’re a lovely shape,” said Elliott,
seriously.
And then, to her amazement, Laura
laughed and leaned over and hugged her.
“And you’re a dear thing, even if you do
think my hands are no lady’s!”
Of course Elliott protested; but as that
was just what she did think, her protestations
were not very convincing.
“You can’t have everything,” said
Laura, quite as though she didn’t mind in
108
the least what her hands looked like. The
strangest part of it all was that Elliott believed
Laura actually didn’t mind.
But she didn’t know how to answer her,
Laura’s words had raised the dust on all
those comfortable cushiony notions Elliott
had had sitting about in her mind for so
long that she supposed they were her very
own opinions. Until the dust settled she
couldn’t tell what she thought, whether
they belonged to her or had simply been
dumped on her by other people. She
couldn’t remember ever having been in
such a position before.
Yes, Elliott found a good deal to think
of. One had to draw the line somewhere;
she had told herself comfortably; but lines
seemed to be very queerly jumbled up in
this war. If a person couldn’t canteen
or help at a hostess house or do surgical
dressings or any of the other things that
had always stood in her mind for girl’s
war work, she had to do what she could,
109
hadn’t she? And if it wasn’t necessary
to be tagged, why, it wasn’t. Laura in
blouse and short skirt, or even in overalls,
seemed to accomplish as much as any possible
Laura in a pantaloon suit or puttees
or any other land uniform. There really
didn’t seem any way out, now that Elliott
understood the matter. Perhaps she had
been rather dense not to understand it before.
“What would you like me to do this
morning, Uncle?” she asked the next day
at the breakfast-table. “I think it is time
I went to work.”
“Going to join the farmerettes?”
“Thinking of it.” She could feel, without
seeing, Stannard’s stare of astonishment.
No one else gave signs of surprise.
Stannard, thought the girl, really hadn’t
as good manners as his cousins.
Uncle Bob surveyed the trim figure, arrayed
in its dark smock and the shortest of
all Elliott’s short skirts. If he felt other
110
than wholly serious he concealed the fact
well.
“The corn needs hoeing, both field-corn
and garden-corn. How about joining that
squad?”
“It suits me.”
Corn—didn’t Hoover urge people to eat
corn? In helping the corn crop, she too
might feel herself feeding the Belgians.
Gertrude linked her arm in her slender
cousin’s as they left the table. “I’ll show
you where the tools are,” she said.
“Harry runs the cultivator in the field, but
we use hand-hoes in the garden.”
“You will have to show me more than
that,” said Elliott. “What does hoeing do
to corn, anyhow?”
“Keeps down the weeds that eat up the
nourishment in the soil,” recited Gertrude
glibly, “and by stirring up the ground
keeps in the moisture. You like to know
the reason for things, too, don’t you? I’m
glad. I always do.”
It wasn’t half bad, with a hoe over her
shoulder, in company with other boys and
girls, to swing through the dewy morning
to the garden. Priscilla had joined the
squad when she heard Elliott was to be in
it, and with Stannard and Tom the three
girls made a little procession. It proved
a simple enough matter to wield a hoe.
Elliott watched the others for a few minutes,
and if her hills did not take on as
workmanlike an appearance as Tom’s and
Gertrude’s, or even as Priscilla’s, they all
assured her practice would mend the fault.
“You’ll do it all right,” Priscilla encouraged
her.
“Sure thing!” said Tom. “We might
have a race and see who gets his row done
first.”
“No races for me, yet,” said Elliott.
“It would be altogether too tame. I’d
qualify for the booby prize without trying.
But the rest of you may race, if you want
to.”
“Just wait!” prophesied Stannard
darkly. “Wait an hour or two and see
how you like hoeing.”
Elliott laughed. In the cool morning,
with the hoe fresh in her hand, she thought
of fatigue as something very far away.
Stan was always a little inclined to croak.
The thing was easy enough.
“Run along, little boy, to your row,” she
admonished him. “Can’t you see that I’m
busy?”
Elliott hoed briskly, if a bit awkwardly,
and painstakingly removed every weed.
The freshly stirred earth looked dark and
pleasant; the odor of it was good, too.
She compared what she had done with
what she hadn’t, and the contrast moved
her to new activity. But after a time—it
was not such a long time, either, though it
seemed hours—she thought it would be
pleasant to stop. The motion of the hoe
was monotonous. She straightened up
and leaned on the handle and surveyed her
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fellow-workers. Their backs looked very
industrious as they bent at varying distances
across the garden. Even Stannard
had left her behind.
Gertrude abandoned her row and came
and inspected Elliott’s. “That looks fine,”
she said, “for a beginner. You must stop
and rest whenever you’re tired. Mother
always tells us to begin a thing easy, not to
tire ourselves too much at first. She won’t
let us girls work when the sun’s too hot,
either.”
Elliott forced a smile. If she had done
what she wished to, she would have thrown
down her hoe and walked off the field.
But for the first time in her life she didn’t
feel quite like letting herself do what she
wished to.
What would these new cousins think of
her if she abandoned a task as abruptly as
that? But what good did her hoeing do?—a
few scratches on the border of this big
garden-patch. It couldn’t matter to the
114
Belgians or the Germans or Hoover or
anybody else whether she hoed or didn’t
hoe. Perhaps, if every one said that, even
of garden-patches—but not every one
would say it. Some people knew how
to hoe. Presumably some people liked
hoeing. Goodness, how long this row
was! Would she ever, ever reach the
end?
Priscilla bobbed up, a moist, flushed
Priscilla. “That looks nice. You haven’t
got very far yet, have you? Never mind.
Things go a lot faster after you’ve done
’em a while. Why, when I first tried to
play the piano, my fingers went so slow,
they just made me ache. Now they skip
along real quick.”
Elliott leaned on her hoe. “Do you play
the piano?”
“Oh, yes! Mother taught me. Good-by.
I must get back to my row.”
“Do you like hoeing?” Elliott called
after her.
“I like to get it done.” The small figure
skipped nimbly away.
“‘Get it done!’” Elliott addressed the
next clump of waving green blades, pessimism
in her voice. “After one row, isn’t
there another, and another, and another,
forever?” She slashed into a mat of
chickweed with venom.
“I knew you’d get tired,” said Stannard,
at her elbow. “Come on over to
those trees and rest a bit. Sun’s getting
hot here.”
Elliott looked at the clump of trees on
the edge of the field. Their shade invited
like a beckoning hand. Little beads of
perspiration stood on her forehead. A
warm lassitude spread through her body,
turning her muscles slack. Hadn’t Gertrude
said Aunt Jessica didn’t let them
work in too hot a sun?
“You’re tired; quit it!” urged Stannard.
“Not just yet,” said Elliott, and her hoe
bit at the ground again.
Tired? She should think she was tired!
And she had fully intended to go with
Stan. Then why hadn’t she gone? The
question puzzled the girl. Quit when you
like and make it up with cajolery was a
motto that Elliott had found very useful.
She was good at cajolery. What made
her hesitate to try it now?
She swung around, half minded to call
Stannard back, when a sentence flashed
into her mind, not a whole sentence, just
a fragment salvaged from a book some one
had once been reading in her hearing:
“This war will be won by tired men
who—” She couldn’t quite get the rest.
An impression persisted of keeping everlastingly
at it, but the words escaped her.
She swung back, her hail unsent. Well,
she was tired, dead tired, and her back
was broken and her hands were blistered,
or going to be, but nobody would think of
saying that that had anything to do with
winning the war. Stay; wouldn’t they?
117
It seemed absurd; but, still, what made
people harp so on food if there weren’t
something in it? If all they said was true,
why—and Elliott’s tired back straightened—why,
she was helping a little bit; or she
would be if she didn’t quit.
It may seem absurd that it had taken a
backache to make Elliott visualize what
her cousins were really doing on their
farm. She ought, of course, to have been
able to see it quite clearly while she sat
on the veranda, but that isn’t always the
way things work. Now she seemed to see
the farm as part of a great fourth line of
defense, a trench that was feeding all the
other trenches and all the armies in the
open and all the people behind the armies,
a line whose success was indispensable to
victory, whose defeat would spell failure
everywhere. It was only for a minute
that she saw this quite clearly, with a kind
of illuminated insight that made her backache
well worth while. Then the minute
118
passed, and as Elliott bent to her hoe again
she was aware only of a suspicion that
possibly when one was having the most
fun was not always when one was being
the most useful.
“Well,” said a pleasant voice, “how does
the hoeing go?”
And there stood Laura with a pitcher in
her hand, and on her face a look—was it
of mingled surprise and respect?
“You mustn’t work too long the first
day,” she told Elliott. “You’re not hardened
to it yet, as we are. Take a rest now
and try it again later on. I have your
book under my arm.”
When, that noon, they all trooped up to
the house, hot and hungry, Elliott went
with them, hot and hungry, too. Nobody
thanked her for anything, and she didn’t
even notice the lack. Farming wasn’t like
canteening, where one expected thanks.
As she scrubbed her hands she noticed that
her nails were hopeless, but her attention
119
failed to concentrate on their demoralized
state. Hadn’t she finished her row?
“Stuck it out, did you?” said Bruce, as
they sat down at dinner. “I bet you
would.”
“I shouldn’t have dared look any of you
in the face again, if I hadn’t,” smiled Elliott.
But his words rang warm in her
ears.