"_This is a pleasant old-world spot_," Roy had remarked in a recent
letter. "_You would love the Vicar._"
"The Vicar! The Vicar? The Vicar of what?" Marjorie spent half an
hour poring over the _Daily Mail_ map of the Western Front which
decorated the greater part of her bedroom wall, in a vain search for a
place called Wakefield, or anything like it. She wrote back:
_By the way, the Vicar you are so enthusiastic about is an entire
stranger to me._
To-night another letter had come, conveying enlightenment:
_Sorry you don’t like the Vicar. He used to be a good chap. An
up-river man, and some singer in his day._
Two minutes later, Marjorie’s pencil was on the map, underlining
Bray-sur-Somme. Dear Roy! She leaned back in her cheap little stall in
the darkness, and chuckled softly to herself. How wonderfully these
foolish trifles lubricated the grinding wheels. But oh—!
Spots and splashes appeared upon the film, and it began to rain ink—an
infallible sign in the world of moving-picture romance of the less
expensive kind that the end of the tale is approaching. Marjorie rose to
her feet, pulled on her hat, and felt her way out into the Earl’s Court
Road. She was sufficiently well known to the asthmatic Admiral of the
Fleet—at least he looked like that—who guarded the portals of the
Electric Palace to receive from him a gracious good night.
"O reevoyer, miss! I ’ope to see you on Thursday. We shall ’ave a
fresh picture then—Charlie Chaplin, the new screen comedian. Everybody’s
talking about ’im. Very comical, ’e is!"
Not far from Earl’s Court Station, in the obscurity of the discreetly
darkened street, Marjorie came upon a motor-car. A girl chauffeur was
endeavouring to jack up the off-hind wheel. Marjorie ranged up alongside
at once.
"Let me help you," she said.
"Thanks," gasped the girl. Together they wrestled with the stiff jack.
"A puncture?" inquired Marjorie.
"Yes. Rotten luck! I am only a mile from home, and this old tyre has
gone on the blink. I must put on the spare rim."
"I know this kind," said Marjorie, fired with characteristic enthusiasm
at the prospect of a thoroughly irksome job. "Let me do it!"
"You’re welcome!" said the girl, who was white with fatigue. "I don’t
mind the driving and the long hours," she continued sociably, settling
down on the running board while Marjorie deftly removed the
unserviceable rim; "but changing tyres, and oiling the engine, and
filling up grease-cups, and all those messy things—that’s what I can’t
stick!"
"Is this your—your work during the war?" asked Marjorie, suddenly
interested.
"Yes—The Women’s Legion. We haven’t been started long. It’s hard work
in all weathers; but it’s helping—a bit. I’m trying to keep my
husband’s job open for him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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