Captain Lucy in France
9781465628039
200 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“The really nice part about doing hard work is that you feel so happy when you’ve left off,” remarked Janet Leslie, stretching her lazy length on the shady grass with arms beneath her head. “Lie down again, Lucy. We have still half an hour to rest.” “I’m not tired. I haven’t worked as hard as you and Edith, because I stopped to read Bob’s letter,” said Lucy Gordon, turning toward the other girl of the trio, who was likewise lying on the grass, her heavy pigtail fallen across one sunburned cheek. “U-h!” grunted Edith Morris with closed eyelids. “That last row of beans was almost too much for me. Gardening isn’t my strong point. I’d rather be junior hospital aide all day.” Lucy’s hazel eyes wandered from her two companions across the wide, level stretch of green, lit by the noonday sun, to where the light, spring shadows of the oak groves checkered its edges. The smooth turf was all cut up into a dozen big truck-gardens. With reckless disregard of the beautiful velvet lawn, busy hands had plowed and planted, until everywhere were springing up young corn and beans, peas, lentils and potato plants. Mr. Arthur Leslie’s big estate was given up to raising food for hungry mouths, and this little corner of it showed but a part of the changes that had come to Highland House since the beginning of the war. It was the second week of May, 1918, and Lucy Gordon was in England. Though only a few miles from London, this quiet countryside seemed very peaceful, but that was only when you looked up at the clear, bright sky, or across the green fields. To watch the people at their daily tasks was to see that not one of them, from school children to old men and women, was for one moment idle, or forgetful of the burden each had to share. Certainly Lucy could not forget it, but she often thanked the constant work for the distraction it gave her anxious thoughts. It was two months since her father, now Colonel Gordon, had been ordered from his home station at Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor, to the western front. His departure had followed quickly her brother Bob’s convalescence after his German captivity, and on top of it had come her mother’s decision to put her knowledge of the care of the sick and of children to some use in the country which held her son and husband. Six weeks ago Mrs. Gordon had sailed to join English and American workers in the reclaimed French villages behind the lines, and with her had gone Lucy, after countless prayers to her mother, as well as to Mr. Leslie, her kind and sympathetic Cousin Henry, to be allowed to accept her English cousins’ invitation and remain as near as she could to her family.
