When, that noon, they all trooped up to the house, hot and hungry, Elliott went with them, hot and hungry, too. Nobody thanked her for anything, and she didn't even notice the lack. Farming wasn't like canteening, where one expected thanks. As she scrubbed her hands she noticed that her nails were hopeless, but her attention failed to concentrate on their demoralized state. Hadn't she finished her row? "Stuck it out, did you?" said Bruce, as they sat down at dinner. "I bet you would." "I shouldn't have dared look any of you in the face again, if I hadn't," smiled Elliott. But his words rang warm in her ears. CHAPTER VI FLIERS Laura and Elliott were in the summer kitchen, filling glass jars with raspberries. As they finished filling each jar, they capped it and lowered it into a wash-boiler of hot water on the stove. "It seems odd," remarked Laura, "to put up berries without sugar." "Isn't it horrid," said Elliott, who had never put up berries at all, but who was longing for candy and hadn't had courage to suggest buying any. "I hope the Allies are going to appreciate all we are doing for them." "Do you?" Laura looked at her oddly. "I hope we are going to appreciate all they have done for us." "Aren't we showing it?" Elliott felt really indignant at her cousin. "Think of the sacrifices we're making for them." "Sacrifices?" How stupid Laura was! "You know as well as I do how many things we are giving up." "Sugar, for instance?" queried Laura. "Sugar is one thing." "Oh, well," said Laura, "I'd rather a little Belgian had my extra pounds, poor scrap! Of course, now and then I get hungry for it, though Mother gives us all the maple we want, but when I do get hungry, I think about the Belgians and the people of northern France who have lost their homes, and of all those children over there who haven't enough to eat to make them want to play; and I think about the British fleet and what it has kept us from for four years; and about the thousands of girls who have given their youth and prettiness to making munitions. I think about things like that and then I say to myself, 'My goodness, what is a little sugar, more or less!' Why, Elliott, we don't begin to feel the war over here, not as they feel it!" Elliott, who considered that she felt the war a good deal, demurred. "I have lost my home," she said, feeling a little ashamed of the words as she said them. "But it is there," objected Laura. "Your home is all ready to go back to, isn't it? That's my point." "And there's Father," said Elliott. "I know, and my brothers. But I don't feel that _I_ have done anything in their being in the army. It is doing them lots of good: every letter shows that. And, anyway, I'd be ashamed if they didn't go." "Something might happen," said Elliott. "What would you say then?"