Yes, Elliott found a good deal to think of. One had to draw the line somewhere; she had told herself comfortably; but lines seemed to be very queerly jumbled up in this war. If a person couldn't canteen or help at a hostess house or do surgical dressings or any of the other things that had always stood in her mind for girl's war work, she had to do what she could, hadn't she? And if it wasn't necessary to be tagged, why, it wasn't. Laura in blouse and short skirt, or even in overalls, seemed to accomplish as much as any possible Laura in a pantaloon suit or puttees or any other land uniform. There really didn't seem any way out, now that Elliott understood the matter. Perhaps she had been rather dense not to understand it before. "What would you like me to do this morning, Uncle?" she asked the next day at the breakfast-table. "I think it is time I went to work." "Going to join the farmerettes?" "Thinking of it." She could feel, without seeing, Stannard's stare of astonishment. No one else gave signs of surprise. Stannard, thought the girl, really hadn't as good manners as his cousins. Uncle Bob surveyed the trim figure, arrayed in its dark smock and the shortest of all Elliott's short skirts. If he felt other than wholly serious he concealed the fact well. "The corn needs hoeing, both field-corn and garden-corn. How about joining that squad?" "It suits me." 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 assured 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 booby 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."