"Ice-cream and cigarettes!" laughed Laura. "I should think they'd have liked something nourishing." "Oh, they got the nourishing things, if it was time. The Government had an arrangement with a restaurant just around the corner to serve soldiers' meals. We didn't have to do that." "You supplied the frills." "Yes." Somehow Elliott did not quite like the words. Laura was quick to notice her discomfiture. "I imagine they needed the frills and the jollying, poor lonesome boys! They're so young, many of them, and not used to being away from home; and the life is strange, however well they may like it." "Yes," said Elliott. "More than one bunch told us they hadn't seen anything to equal what we did for them this side of New York. Our uniforms were so becoming, too; even a plain girl looked cute in those caps. Why, Laura, you might have a uniform, mightn't you, if it's war work?" "What should I want of a uniform?" "People who saw you would know what you're doing." "They know now, if they open their eyes." "They'd know why, I mean--that it's war work." "Mercy! Nobody around here needs to be told why a person hoes potatoes these days. They're all doing it." "Do you hoe potatoes?" Elliott had no notion how comically her consternation sat on her pretty features. Laura laughed at the amazed face of her cousin. "Of course I do, when potatoes need hoeing." "But do you like it?" "Oh, yes, in a way. Hoeing potatoes isn't half bad." Elliott opened her lips to say that it wasn't girls' work, remembered that she had made that remark once before, and changed to, "It is hard work, and it isn't a bit interesting." Then Laura asked two questions that left Elliott gasping. "Don't you like to do anything except what is easy? Though I don't know that it is any harder to hoe potatoes for an hour than to play tennis that length of time. And anything is interesting, don't you think, that has to be done?" "Goodness, _no_!" ejaculated Elliott, when she found her voice. "I don't think that at all! Do you, really?" "Why, yes!" Laura laughed a trifle deprecatingly. "I'm not bluffing. I never thought I'd care to spray potatoes, but one day it had to be done, and Father and the boys were needed for something else. It wasn't any harder to do than churning, and I found it rather fun to watch the potato-bugs drop off. I calculated, too, how many Belgians the potatoes in those hills would feed, either directly or by setting wheat free, you know. I forget now how many I made it. I know I felt quite exhilarated when I was through. Trudy helped."