CHAPTER IX

ANOTHER SHOCK!

You know how fast you can walk when you're angry and don't see where you are going?

Well, that was me as I tore out of our garden (still hatless and in my Saxe blue woolly coat) down the road towards Nowhere Junction and then came to the field that leads in the direction of the Ford. It might have been Hyde Park for all I saw of it, but close to the stile I was reminded of where I was by the tramp of feet on the frosty road (thanks be it's dry frost at last for a change) and the sound of men's voices singing in parts a hymn tune with these words:

"_When we get our civvy clothes on, O 'ow 'appy we shall be! When this blooming war is o--ver, No more soldiering for me!_"

It was a squad of that regiment called "The Super-Filberts," marching at ease after a class.

Behind them came their officer, the sort of young man who is awfully nice, but whom you feel you must have met before somewhere because he is so like thousands of pictures of our gallant defenders in the _Sunday Herald._

With him came another tall, rather disconsolate figure in khaki, wearing eyeglasses--Nancy's friend, Mr. Curtis!

At that moment I was so infuriated against Mr. Lascelles that I felt just as angry with anything calling itself his friend. So I only gave the very curtest nod when he and the other officer saluted me. Salutes are "no treat to me" now--as the bus driver said about the ladies' ankles.

I presently came to a field where I had to pass a guard of soldiers, who challenged me, and then, smiling, let me go on. I had to pick my way pretty carefully. It was a perfect honeycomb of wet and muddy ditches--trenches that the "Super-Filberts" had been digging under the instruction of Mr. Curtis, who is an instructor, I may mention. I looked into them, and simply couldn't help heaving a tiny sigh of pity for the poor darlings out there "somewhere in France." They have to live in those trenches for weeks on end. How on earth do they ever keep their poor feet dry? Or do they give up all hope of trying to?

Some way away from the trenches, there was a deeper hole covered over. I had heard the Incubus explaining to Evelyn that this was the entrance to a "sap"--one of the long tunnels which the men go down to lay a charge of gunpowder.

I put aside the wooden cover, which was like the door of the open mouth of a well, looking right down into the beginning of the sap. It looked so narrow that I couldn't possibly imagine anybody working there except a mole or something about the size of that scrubby little Mr. Lascelles. Never mind him, though. I had come out here to try to forget him. So, beginning to feel angry again, on I pranced, towards what they call "the fortified house" at the other end of the field.

Now, the fortified house is a square, stone-built farm affair, which has been bought by the military authorities for instruction purposes. The inside roofs and some of the inner walls have been knocked down.

And the windows have all been boarded up, and instead of them there are wicked little square holes everywhere just big enough to put the muzzle of a machine-gun through. A lot of the classes for defence and that sort of thing take place up at this house. But, of course, there wouldn't be a soul about there now, as it was four o'clock.

The sun was beginning to set behind the trees just like an old-fashioned Christmas card, and I had met the class, of course, marching away.

I peeped in through the open, doorless entrance of the house and tried to imagine what it must be like to find yourself one of a lot of soldiers working those machine-guns, with perhaps half of your comrades fallen around you and scarcely enough ammunition to hold out until the relief comes up, and a strong surrounding force of horrible grey-coated Boches creeping nearer and nearer!

I was just thinking this when I jumped back with a little scream.

"Hullo! What is it? Oh!----"

For a moment I felt as if my imaginings had come true. I thought that there before me, out of the fortified house, was slinking and stealing the stealthy grey-clad form of one of those Germans.

Then I saw what it was. And I burst out laughing, in relief, at the cause of my absurd fright. For the man who had slipped quietly out of the house, touching his old felt hat to me, was nothing more alarming than an English labourer.

Besides this, it was a labourer whom I knew! It was no one more or less than our nice old Penny, the gardener, with that pathetic old black wig of his, who has been working for Aunt Victoria since before we girls came to live with her at Mud Flats.

"Good evening, missie. What a fright you gave me!" he said in his nice, kind, affectionate voice. He is very fond of all of us--a real old-fashioned English servant, who is more of a friend than anything else, as Aunt Victoria says. "What are you doing out here at this time--come to watch the soldiers?" I asked him.

"Oh, no, miss. I was just about seeing whether there mightn't be one or two cart-loads of gravel by the hedge there where they have been digging. I thought I might be able to get them to let me have it cheap, and it would do nicely to mend those holes in your auntie's garden path where the drippings have come from the rain off the porch roof; and then I went into the house here, so as to get a bit of shelter for lighting a pipe--too much breeze outside."

Somehow I couldn't help feeling at the time that there was something very queer about Penny that afternoon. To begin with, talking about "a breeze" when it was so still and frosty that one could hear the chinking of the R.E.'s forge and the sawing of some planks in their workshops simply miles away!

And, for the second thing, old Penny never has smoked for as long as I can remember. Mr. Lascelles's cigarettes were the first whiff of tobacco smoke that have profaned Aunt Victoria's curtains since the year Eighteen Hundred and Goodness Knows.

So how could our old Penny have imagined that he was going to light a pipe?

And I said to him: "You had better not let the 'Super-Filberts' catch you poking round their fortified house, Penny! They might arrest you on suspicion of being a German spy!" I was just joking, of course, to keep his spirits up. And, anyhow, the poor dear old fellow did smile at last. He said to me: "Bless your heart, my dear Miss Elizabeth! There ain't no soldiers going to think anything of that sort about an honest old man like me! They all know where I work, and all about me. They are civil to me, and no mistake."

And he went hobbling off, rheumatism and all.

I didn't want to go back home again so soon, as you can imagine. What I wanted was to put off as long as possible seeing again that Lonely-Subaltern-impersonating disgrace to the New Army, Mr. Lascelles.

So, instead of going straight down the road again, I turned down a lane that is rather a long way round, by the oyster beds.

It is a narrow lane, always muddy unless we have frost, when the ruts are as hard as very deep corrugated iron. There is a wood on each side.

I say, you must really excuse some more landscape just here, will you? because it really is part of the story. I have just got to put in those woods, because it was they that made the lane so very dark. The tall hollies on either side of it branch out overhead and turn it into a regular tunnel.

So that was how it happened that two figures ahead of me, strolling along, I hardly saw until I was right up to them.

And they didn't see me at all, being too fearfully absorbed in what they were saying to each other.

They were a tall girl and a young man in uniform--an officer.

Oh, of course, we have plenty of officers down here. Some of them have their wives and things down for the week-end, too.

So, though the man had got a massive-looking khaki arm about the girl's waist, and though she was leaning her head in that "loppy," helpless sort of way against his shoulder that I suppose must mean she's fearfully in love, I shouldn't have taken any notice of this pair if I hadn't heard the man's voice.

It was a voice I knew. It was the voice of that big, good-looking Captain Masters: you know, the forget-me-notty one who came to our party, with the black hair like pitch, with a crinkle in it.

And it--the voice, of course--was saying, just as I passed, these startling words:

"But look here, darling: look here, Nancy----"

I gave one startled glance, through the dusk, at the figure of the girl.

Yes, it was. There are only three girls, only three of us in this village who would look as tall as that standing by the side of a six-foot-fourer like Captain Masters.

It was my own sister Nancy! _With_ the young man that I thought she hadn't even seen since the party, since she was out when he came to pay his duty-call! How--what----

Well, of course, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to pass on as quickly as I could, pretending that I hadn't seen them. (They really hadn't seen me.)

I have my faults, goodness knows! Hot-tempered I may be. Vulgar and outspoken, Evelyn says I am, very often. And it is not for nothing that I have been nicknamed "Rattle." I suppose I do really talk rather a lot?

But no one shall ever say that I am not a sports-woman!

So I didn't breathe a word to Evelyn, when I got home this evening, of the terrific surprise I had been just given by our fair young sister! However, I didn't see why I shouldn't tax Nancy with it later on. So, after tea (where Mr. Lascelles never turned up) I took her aside, and said I had simply got to speak to her. I dragged her into the linen-room, which is a funny little warm, lavender-scented cubbyhole two steps down from the garret, where our poor old Penny, the gardener, has been put for the benefit of his rheumatism.

"I say, you are greedy," I said to her as a start off.

"Greedy?" said Nancy, opening her enormous innocent-looking blue eyes at me. "Do you mean because I have finished all those chocolates of Mr. Lascelles's? You know Evelyn had a box of her own, and you never will touch any sweets that unfortunate young man brings into the house, so----"

"Nothing about chocolates," I said, cutting it short. "But what about a girl who in the same week allows one young man to kiss her, and another to get on 'darling' terms with her?"

For a moment Nancy didn't say a single word. By the light of the tiny blue fairy light in the linen-room I saw that she had got the family blush well on!

There really are drawbacks to being the possessors of these dazzling fair skins like all of the Verdeleys have got.

Then she drew a long breath and said in a resigned little voice: "I suppose you mean ... just before tea?"

I nodded. "The--er--the second Prince Charming is a good deal better-looking than the first one," I told her. "That I will say for you."

"But--but, Rattle," began Nancy, in a half-horror-struck, half-puzzled tone, "how could you--how did you know?"

"Passed you just now in the lane when you were too wrapped up in your flirtation to see who was walking up behind you."

"Flirtation?" cried Nancy, quite sharply. "It isn't any flirtation!"

"What? What?" I put in, thrilled. "D'you mean it's what they call in books The Real Thing?"

"Rather," said Nancy, as if she meant it from the bottom of her heart, and then she pulled up as if she'd said what she wasn't going to.

I clutched her nice plump arm, "Nancy! Are you really very in love with him, and him with you?"

"Don't! _Please_ don't ask me any questions!"

"You're engaged to him, then?"

"No!" said Nancy, in an uncertain sort of voice.

"What? Not engaged to him," I said, angrily. "Oh! If he's just a philanderer, like they have on the stage----"

"He--he's nothing of the kind----"

"If he is, and he's just passing the time away by making love to the prettiest girl here, and then going to ride away leaving her to break her heart----"

"But he isn't: he isn't. Rather not! Oh, my dear child, I can't explain," Nancy said, half laughing, half crying. "I assure you it's all right!"

"That means that you _are_ engaged."

"I never said so," murmured Nancy, dimpling.

"I don't care what you 'say.' I suppose you call it 'an understanding.' A girl at school's sister had one of those for six months once, and it meant that nobody could go into the drawing-room when she was there with the young man and that she never looked at anybody else and that they got married in the usual way: so what the _difference_ is," I said, "I can't see!"

"Perhaps not. Only, Rattle, you will be a brick, won't you?" she said very coaxingly. "You will prrrromise you won't breathe a word of----"

"You needn't have asked me that," I said, hurt. "Awful I may be. But at least I'm not a sneak."

"Oh, I know, I know! Only you might forget, and rag me before Evelyn, and Evelyn would be---- You _know_ what Evelyn would be like!"

I nodded. "A conscientious objector."

Then I thought of something. Just as Nancy was going to slip away, I caught her arm again.

"You might tell me just one thing."

"No, Rattle, no. I'm not going to answer any questions. I can't now. 'Tisn't fair."

"It is! It's nothing to do with your--with him. It can't make any difference if you tell me just this.

"What, then?"

"This. I may be the youngest of the family, and too young and ignorant to know anything at all," I began (meaning it sarcastically, of course), "but I can guess _some_ things. I can see from your face----"

Here Nancy turned her pretty face away.

"I could see from your face," I persisted, "that what's happened means something absolutely wonderful to you."

She gave my hand a little squeeze, "You _darling_ Baby! You'll know yourself, some day----"

"Yes, but what I want to know now is, doesn't it make you sorry that you let Mr. Curtis kiss you at the party?"

She stared at me. "Sorry? What's it got to do with it? Why should I be sorry?"

"You don't feel," I asked, "that you've wasted something that ought to have been saved up for--for the real love affair?"

Nancy laughed like anything. "My _dear_ Rattle! My _dear_ Kid!"

"Thanks: a year younger than you, aren't I?"

"Yes, but--oh, as if _that_ had anything whatsoever to do with _this_!" cried Nancy, still laughing. "Oh, what a lot of mistakes there must be made in this world by people making up their minds to believe there's only one kind of kiss!"

And then she ran downstairs, leaving me to ponder over the doings of a very crowded day.