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In the dark of the room she could see Gwinnie's little body straining back from the waist, her legs stiffening, her face pink and swollen; and John's face looking at Gwinnie. She shouted down at him, "Why can't you take the damned thing? She'll break her back with it." And he shouted up, "That's her look-out." That time.
Above his head the battleship sailed on its green field. He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was gone. There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago gave in and let her go.
"John do my knees show awfully as I walk?" "No. Of course they don't. Gwinnie's do. She doesn't know what to do with them." He looked down at her and smiled. "I like you. I like you in that cap. You look as if you were sailing fast against a head wind, as if you could cut through anything." Their turn brought them again under the women's eyes.
Through the opening she could see the farmhouse, three ball-topped gables, the middle one advancing, the front built out there in a huge door-place that carried a cross windowed room under its roof. Low heavy-browed mullions; the panes, black shining slits in the grey and gold of the stone. All their rooms. Hers and Gwinnie's under the near gable by the fir-trees, Mr. and Mrs.
She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk sport's coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed hair hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's heads turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected. Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece.
You're in the most dangerous place here." "Somebody's got to be in it." He looked at her and smiled. "Jeanne," he said, "in her armour." "Rot." And they were silent. "I say, John my car does cover Gwinnie's a bit, doesn't it?" "Yes," he said abruptly. "That's all right. You must go now. They're coming for the stretchers." His face quivered.
From September nineteen-thirteen to December to March nineteen-fourteen, to June she had been at the farm nine months. June May April. This time three months ago John had come. In the bottom of the field, at the corner by the yard-gate, under the elms, she could see Gwinnie astride over the tilted bucket, feeding the calves. It was Gwinnie's turn. She heard the house door open and shut.
"I , sa-ay " Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise. The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft and schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses of her hair, the pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick grey eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring. Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it.
It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming batteries, in excitement, with an end in view, and quite another thing to sit tight and still on a motionless car, to be fired on. A bit trying to the nerves, she thought, if it went on long. She was glad that her car stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwinnie's, and she wondered how John was getting on up there.
From time to time she caught him looking at her across the deck. When Gwinnie's talk dropped he made no effort to revive it, but stood brooding; a square, thick-set man. His head leaned forward a little from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of his glasses.
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