The Camerons of Highboro Part 9

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 a.s.sured 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 b.o.o.by 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 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 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 la.s.situde 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 n.o.body would think of saying that that had anything to do with winning the war. Stay; wouldn't they? 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 pa.s.sed, 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. n.o.body 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 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.

CHAPTER VI

FLIERS

Laura and Elliott were in the summer kitchen, filling gla.s.s jars with raspberries. As they finished filling each jar, they capped it and lowered it into a wash-boiler of hot water on the stove.

"It seems odd," remarked Laura, "to put up berries without sugar."

"Isn't it horrid," said Elliott, who had never put up berries at all, but who was longing for candy and hadn't had courage to suggest buying any. "I hope the Allies are going to appreciate all we are doing for them."

"Do you?" Laura looked at her oddly. "I hope we are going to appreciate all they have done for us."

"Aren't we showing it?" Elliott felt really indignant at her cousin.

"Think of the sacrifices we're making for them."

"Sacrifices?"

How stupid Laura was! "You know as well as I do how many things we are giving up."

"Sugar, for instance?" queried Laura.

"Sugar is one thing."