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.