for payment but was holding out her hand, palm up, as John Lindsay had done. Self-consciously, Maisie laid her own hand on top as Mrs. McRobbie leaned forward, clicking her tongue and shaking her head.
“You’re in a wee bit of a mess there, aren’t you? But I’m sure I can find you some lard, if that’s what you think’ll work.”
“That’s what I was told would work,” Maisie said, following the cook into the pantry, “by one of the American chaps we met at the dance last night. He said I should mix it with some Vaseline and smear it on the blisters.”
“An American, was it?” said the cook, as she drew back a white muslin cloth and cut into the large oblong of white fat it covered. “I didn’t know that there were any Americans around here. Were they not the Canadians?”
“Canadians?”
Mrs. McRobbie had retrieved a crumpled sheet of brown paper and was folding it around the white block. “Aye, there’s a whole bunch of Canadian lumberjacks up the road a piece, working on the old laird’s estate, clearing it for another army camp, from what I heard.”
“Oh, I’m not sure,” Maisie said, “maybe.”
She remembered that Mary had said that they were Americans, but had John said that himself? Perhaps not. And then it occurred to Maisie that she hadn’t even bothered to press him further on what he’d been doing to get blisters that matched hers, or about where he was from. In fact, she hadn’t asked him anything about himself at all. Her mother would not be pleased if she knew that, because according to her, a lady should always use the eighty–twenty rule when talking to a gentleman.
“Men like to talk only about themselves,” Mother had said. “Therefore, a lady must ensure that eighty percent of the conversation should be by him or about him, and she should only ever talk about herself as an answer to his direct question, making sure to turn the conversation back the other way as quickly as possible.”
Maisie had snickered with Beth through this lecture, but now, remembering that all that she and John had talked about was her wish to dance and her hands, she was left to wonder if that was why John had abandoned her.
Damn! She hated to think her mother might be right.
Mrs. McRobbie was watching her, and Maisie realized she was waiting for an answer to some question that Maisie hadn’t even heard.
“Sorry?”
“I asked if the chap holding your hands at the dance was handsome.” The old woman’s eyes were sparkling with amusement. “You know, the Canadian.”
“He wasn’t Canadian, I don’t think. And he wasn’t at all handsome.” Maisie tried hard not to blush under the cook’s scrutiny. “Well, yes, he was quite handsome, but he wasn’t holding my hands, other than to dance, obviously, since you have to hold hands to dance, but he wasn’t holding them, not like that.”
“Like what, dear?”
“Like that, like you mean, I mean,” Maisie could feel herself getting flustered.
Mrs. McRobbie’s smile spread wider. “Oh well, there’s time yet.”
As if realizing that Maisie was becoming anxious, the cook suddenly shoved the block of lard into Maisie’s hand. “Off you go now—the others will be waiting for you, I’m sure.”
“Oh, right. Yes. Thank you.” Maisie waved the lard in the air, and as she turned back toward the dining room, Mrs. McRobbie chuckled again.
“And best not put that on your hands just before you pick up an ax, dear. I don’t want Mr. McRobbie being decapitated. He’s to fix the tiles on our roof before the end of the summer, and he’ll need a head for that.”
Maisie smiled as she went back to the dining room. So much for the fearsome Mrs. McRobbie.
Dot, Phyllis, Mary, and Anna had already left the dining room by the time Maisie caught up with them.
“We wondered where you’d gone,” said Dot. “Come on, back to the axes. According to Phyllis, Mr. McRobbie thinks we can move on to snedding tomorrow if we conquer chopping today.”
“Lucky us!” said Mary.
As they passed the office, several girls were still waiting to get stamps for their letters. Beside them, on the table by the office door, was the basket of postcards, enticingly blank, other than the scarlet stamp bearing King George’s head in the top right corner.
Maisie hesitated. Even if she put her money into the honesty box and took a postcard, it didn’t mean she had to send it. Not today, anyway. She could keep it to send for Beth’s birthday perhaps. Or even for Christmas. She didn’t have to send it right now.
But then, why waste tuppence on it now if she wasn’t going to send it till later? That made no sense.
Then it came to her. She would make a deal with herself. If she had exactly the coins to pay for the stamp, she’d get the postcard. If she didn’t, she’d walk away.
Digging her hand into her trouser pocket, Maisie pulled out the small collection of coins and counted them off with one finger. Two shillings, five ha’pennies, and three farthings.
“Damn!”
She did have the right change to make two pennies exactly. With a resigned sigh, she slid four ha’pennies into the honesty box and picked up one of the cards, waggling it in her fingers for a minute or two before stuffing it into her back pocket.
No, she would not send the postcard today, but at least she knew she had it, just in case.
Later that morning, Maisie and the others followed Mr. McRobbie for their final chopping lesson through the paths of the estate to where the old woods butted up to a wide stretch of pine plantation. Here the trees stood like soldiers on a parade ground, set at regular intervals, in rows and columns, each about five yards away from its neighbor. Maisie was pleased to see that here there was almost no underbrush or scrubby grass below the trees to get in the way of her ax, only a carpet of fragrant brown needles.
On Mr. McRobbie’s order, the lumberjills all lined up along the first row of sturdy trees, one girl to each trunk, and set to work to chop it down. Although she was gradually figuring it out, chopping hadn’t turned out to be as easy as Maisie had expected. But it was early days, she kept telling herself, because by the end of the course, she would know how to chop and saw, how to fell a tree, how to clear all the small branches off it—that was snedding—and also how to roll the logs using their cant hooks, and then haul the timber away with hooks and chains. They were also learning the uses for the different woods, and how to cut to a specific measurement. The trees the girls were chopping today were Scots pine, so they would probably end up sawn to short lengths as pit props for coal mines, or perhaps as fence posts, with the wastage going for charcoal. But for any of that to happen, the lumberjills had to get the trees down first.
“Don’t swing so wildly, lassie!” Maisie heard
