‘Oh, why, why am I a woman?’ she clasped her hands above her head in a passion of revolt.  ’What does one’s own life matter?  Why waste a thought—­an hour upon it!’

In a second she was at her table putting together the notes she had made that morning in the wood.  About a hundred and fifty more ash marked in that wood alone!—­thanks to Sir Henry.  She rang up Captain Dell, and made sure that they would be offered that night direct to the Government timber department—­the Squire’s ash, for greater haste, having been now expressly exempted from the general contract.  Canadians were coming down to fell them at once.  They must be housed.  One of the vacant farms, not yet let, was to be got ready for them.  She made preliminary arrangements by telephone.  Then, after a hasty lunch, at which the Squire did not appear, and Mrs. Gaddesden was more than usually languid and selfish, Elizabeth rushed off to the village on her bicycle.  The hospital Commandant was waiting for her, with such workpeople as could be found, and the preparation of the empty house for fifty more beds was well begun.  Elizabeth was frugal, but resolute, with the Squire’s money.  She had leave to spend.  But she would not abuse her power; and all through her work she was conscious of a queer remorseful gratitude towards the man in whose name she was acting.

Then she bicycled to the School, where a group of girls whom she had captured for the land were waiting to see her.  Their uniforms were lying ready on one of the schoolroom tables.  She helped the girls to put them on, laughing, chatting, admiring—­ready besides with a dozen homely hints on how to keep well—­how to fend for themselves, perhaps in a lonely cottage—­how to get on with the farmer—­above all, how to get on with the farmer’s wife.  Her sympathy made everything worth while—­put colour and pleasure into this new and strange adventure, of women going out to break up and plough and sow the ancient land of our fathers, which the fighting men had handed over to them.  Elizabeth decked the task with honour, so that the girls in their khaki stood round her at last glowing, though dumb!—­and felt themselves—­as she bade them feel—­the comrades-in-arms of their sweethearts and their brothers.

Then with the March twilight she was again at Mannering.  She changed her bicycling dress, and six o’clock found her at her desk, obediently writing from the Squire’s dictation.

He put her through a stiff series of geographical notes, including a number of quotations from Homer and Herodotus, bearing on the spread of Greek culture in the Aegean.  During the course of them he broke out once or twice into his characteristic sayings and illustrations, racy or poetic, as usual, and Elizabeth would lift her blue eyes, with the responsive look in them, on which he had begun to think all his real power of work depended.  But not a word passed between them on any other subject; and when it was over she rose, said a quiet good-night, and went away.  After she had gone, the Squire sat over the fire, brooding and motionless, for most of the evening.