CHAPTER XII

WE "GET USED TO IT "

"This is the life, This is the life, This is the life--for mine!" --THE BING BOYS.

We had been at Mr. Price's farm for a week now. In that short time the miracle had begun to work.

Seven bottles of the most powerful pick-me-up could not have worked in that time what was done by these seven natural tonics--fresh air, physical toil, simple, wholesome food, cold water, newness of occupation, laughter with comradeship, and profound sleep o' nights!

"This is pretty awful, you know," we whispered rebelliously to each other half a dozen times a day.

But----

Already we were beginning to enjoy it all! Neither of us admitted this, of course. For my part, I should have felt it was too ridiculously soon to enjoy anything in life again--and such a life!

That rag-time rabble of girls! That lack of civilized comforts in camp! Vic's orders for the day! This routine of jobs only fit for a farm-lad--yet what thrills of pride ran through me at the thought that I, Joan Matthews, was doing them at all, and that soon I should begin to do them quite well!

I had cleaned out a hopelessly filthy-looking cow-house--thrill of pride number one--all by myself--nearly. No rush of work accomplished at the office had ever given me such satisfaction! Then I'd taken three milking lessons, at the first of which Mrs. Price said I'd made a good start--thrill number two. Now Mr. Price had set me and my chum on to a new job--thrill number three--in which he was instructing us himself.

This was to harness his old white mare, Blossom, to the cart, to take it down to the field of roots across the road from the farm, and to fork up roots, which we were presently to pulp into food for the bullocks, which were still being partly stable-fed each day.

Into that big field, bordered by elms, through which we caught glimpses of a faintly purple range of mountains, Elizabeth and I tramped with the farmer; she at Blossom's mild head, I carrying a fork and listening to that gentle giant, Mr. Price.

"When we have got a cart-load I will take you to the grinding-machine and show you how you mash these things up," he told me. "Very handy, the new power-engine! Three belts for shafting I've got from the engine to the machine. Put it in this winter, I did. All done by horse-power before that. Wonderful! What they're getting to do now in the farms! Wouldn't have believed it in my father's time--no, nor that I should have little young ladies like that one to lead the horses for me," he smiled. "Stop her here, missy. Whoa, back! It's up here we'll start."

But before Elizabeth had left the horse's head, before I'd dug my fork more than once into the rich-smelling earth, a "Good morning" sounded behind us, in a deep but gentle voice.

We turned, I saying resignedly to myself in that flash:

"I suppose it's Captain Holiday again--sounds as meek as Moses for once, but he's evidently come to see how the Land Girls get on with their root-digging, and to tell them all about it."

And I found that I was wrong.

The young man who'd been tramping up that field behind us was not Captain Holiday, though he wore khaki and leggings like his.

"Er----" he began with a hand to his cap, and obviously not sure whether he ought to speak first to the farmer or to me. "I--er--saw you from the road there. If you don't mind, aren't you"--nervously--"aren't you the two ladies from London?"

"Yes," I said, standing there rather astonished.

The young officer went on with his eyes on the cart, that shut out any view of Elizabeth.

"Oh, yes. I hope you don't mind, but I thought I'd come up and--er--speak----"

At that moment I thought I had never in my life seen anybody so agonizingly timid. Gazing at the D.S.O. ribbon on his chest, I could only wonder if he had won it whilst he was in a high fever and did not know what he was doing.... Miserably shy, too, he looked to me.

But he didn't go away. He went on talking, though stammeringly.

"You know, I know you both quite well--I mean by name, of course. We've--we've exchanged plenty of letters and all that," he went on stammeringly.

"I'm afraid it's a mistake," I began.

"Oh--er--no," he interrupted. "I'd better tell you who I am--stupid of me. I'm--er--my name is Fielding. Colonel Fielding."

Colonel Fielding!--Fielding?

But that was the name of our landlord! That was the officer from whom we'd taken over our Golder's Green flat!

How we'd talked and talked over the fancy picture that we had made up of him--the white-moustached old warrior of a bygone age, as we had imagined him!

Now, here he stood before us--and could anything be less like our preconceived view of him?

Colonel Fielding in the flesh was a young man of twenty-six, slim-waisted and fair. The white moustache of our imaginings was represented by the merest hint of close-cropped golden down upon his upper lip.

I could hardly believe it.

"Do you mean," I exclaimed, "that you are really the Colonel Fielding who let us his flat?"

"Er--yes. I am." He reddened, actually reddened all over his face as he cleared his throat and added, "Do you mind telling me--are you Miss Elizabeth Weare?"

"No, I'm Miss Matthews," I told him. "That's Miss Weare----"

For it was at this moment that Blossom dragged the cart a step forward, and Elizabeth, calling manfully. "Whoa-back!" in imitation of Mr. Price, reached up to her head again, and pulled her round.

I suppose to the end of his days one man will see Elizabeth as she was at that moment in the field of roots.

It was a colourful and blowy day. The sky, threatening rain, showed capricious clouds, dove-grey and silver-white, tossing across the blue. A mauve screen of Welsh hills, a nearer fringe of budding elms bordered that big field of lush brown-and-purply-green. Set in the middle of it like a giant's toy was the scarlet-painted farm-cart with the white mare; a small, boyish, crop-haired, smocked and breeched Land-girl at her head.

Colour and sunburn suited my chum's small face. The Land Army hat had been drenched by several showers to a becoming softness over her thick hair. She held herself (even in those early days of freedom from skirts) with a new poise. She was as effective as any poster in the Tube! but with no Tube atmosphere about her; no! the strong scents of earth, the wine-sweet breath of Spring wind that tossed the black locks on her rosied cheeks, and flapped in her smock, billowing it out below her belt or furling it above her legs--her legs which were at once sturdy and dainty. Briefly, she looked ripping. And I saw that Colonel Fielding saw it even in that first moment of his greeting her.

It was not much more than a greeting and a good-bye; a word to the farmer about "hoping he didn't mind"--which would appear to be the youthful colonel's pet stand-by of a phrase.

"Er--I might be down for some time probably," he concluded, reddening again. "Perhaps I might be allowed to call?"

Elizabeth, without looking at him, answered in a tone like the shutting of a door:

"We live in camp here. Men aren't allowed there."

"Oh--sorry. I hope you didn't mind. Perhaps," he added--faint but pursuing--"I shall see you again--er--somewhere----"

Elizabeth, stony little wretch, said nothing at all. I think I began to say "Are you staying at Careg?" out of sheer pity, but it was Mr. Price, the gentle Welsh giant, who broke in:

"Yes, sure! Any time you like to see over the farm! I'll show you our shire horses! Interest you, those would. You shall come round with me."

"Oh, thanks. I should love to," murmured Colonel Fielding, with one last glance at my chum before he melted away out of the landscape.

Even as he did so, I saw the expression on that fair, girlish face of the man we'd always nicknamed "Elizabeth's Old Colonel." He was unmistakably, unfeignedly admiring. It made him show, for a second, quite a determined gleam between his long lashes.

But what a waste of time for him to admire Elizabeth--at least if he tried to show it! He was, anyhow, not the sort of person, I decided, that any girl would fall in love with!

Finnicky, I called him. I said so afterwards to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth said she was so busy with the horse she hadn't had time to see what he was like.

Then (as I should have told you) we forgot all about that encounter in the root-field.

For three days we lived the Life Laborious; busy and full, but empty of all young men. Not a glimpse of one.

Then, one evening down at the swimming-pool, I said to Elizabeth, sitting on a mossy boulder and waiting for Vic to come up:

"Do you know we've been here for three weeks now? I feel as if we had been Land Girls all our lives. But the last week has been the quickest----"

"--And the jolliest!" interrupted my chum.

Then we both burst out laughing together.

Pretence was at an end. We agreed that we were simply loving the life and the people, the work and the play.

[Illustration: _We agreed that we were simply loving the life and the people, the work and the play_]

As for me, I was such a different girl. I hadn't time to think about how different.

"Ready, Celery-face?" sang out Vic, striding from behind the alder where she'd flung off her coat.

A group of girls watched her--the former star of a London swimming-bath--as she took her plunge into the pool.

Then I waded in after her, and, all awkwardly still, swam the dozen strokes that brought me up to her. Panting, I held on to her. An absurdly short little effort--but it was the taste of a new function to me, the beginner. What years I'd wasted in not knowing how to swim! But oh, the joy of it now!

I looked round to see Elizabeth striking out with arms that were, like mine, milky-white to the elbow and then gloved in sunburn.

For by now I must tell you we had got our "Land Girl's complexion." This asset is gained in three distinct stages.

First stage: A scorching and very unbecoming scarlet that spread itself over the face. The recruit from town, seeing herself with a tomato-nose set between crimson cheeks, flies to her old and true friend, the powder-puff. Useless! To powder over that red is like putting a coat of transparent whitewash over a brick wall.

The second stage: Soreness and blisters; a skin that peels off in flakes like the bark of a silver birch. No help for this! Sybil had given me cucumber and benzoin lotion to cool the smart, but the only cure was that which time brought about.

Stage the third: A smooth, even wash of honey-tan over the newly-bloomed roses of the cheeks; the colour of the ripe glow on a sun-kissed peach.

Elizabeth had reached this becoming stage on the day that Colonel Fielding had seen her first at the white mare's head in the field of roots, and I was scarcely a day behind her. I laughed at the reflection in the pool of the girl whom Vic and the others still nicknamed "Celery-face!"

Rosier than ever after our swim, we dressed and strolled together down the lanes. For "the more you have of a thing the more you want it" applies to fresh air as well as to the other essentials of life.

Now that we were working out of doors all day, we found we wanted to stay out of doors in the evening! How unlike town, where, having worked all day in a stuffy office, our one idea of relaxation was an equally stuffy theatre!

But I did sometimes miss the theatre! Upon this very evening I said to Elizabeth:

"The birds are lovely tonight--listen! But do you know what? I would give anything to be going to a revue tonight; just to see some pretty girls' clothes after these weeks of felt hats and breeches! Just to hear some gay tunes from a good band!"

"Yes," agreed Elizabeth, quite dreamily for her. "I would like to hear a little music again just for once. I----"

"Who's saying they want to hear a little music?" It was a merry girl's voice that broke upon our ears. "Here's where dreams come true!"