Except it wasn’t a great joke to the Frenchwomen, was it? Or to women who weren’t them.
The one positive bit was that Kate didn’t seem to be angry with her anymore. Emmie told herself that was a good thing, at least. They were friends again. Mostly.
Without saying anything about it, Kate quietly changed the schedules, assigning Emmie to the villagers in the basse-cour, on the pretense that Alice was too busy with the trucks to do social service work as well. Emmie appreciated it, she did, but it was hard knowing that it was charity of sorts—giving her something to do where she could be close at hand.
Playing Lady Bountiful, Kate had called it. It wasn’t, Emmie realized, terribly much fun being on the other end of it, knowing that your life was being managed for you—for your own good, but even so. Because you couldn’t be trusted to do it yourself.
She would do better from now on, Emmie promised herself, and redoubled her efforts on the Christmas planning: caroling on Christmas Eve, the Unit’s own Christmas party on Christmas morning, a party for all their officer friends Christmas Day, parties for all the villages at the rate of two a day thereafter, with a personally chosen present for every single adult and child in their domain. The plans grew more and more elaborate: a fishing game for the children, with gifts attached to hooks behind a screen. Matching gifts to ages. Praying the packages from America would arrive and going on an emergency buying trip when they didn’t. Hours in the frozen cellar, sorting and packaging and attaching fiddly little hooks to fishing line.
It was a blow when all plans were canceled Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful moonlit night, like an illustration out of a book of carols, snow like frosting on the old stone church—and the authorities, speeding through in their cars, warning everyone that there would be air raids, that mass was canceled.
“But we knew our French carols so well,” Emmie mourned. “Even the descants!”
“We’ll still have our parties. Those are during the daytime,” Kate consoled her, but it seemed like a very inauspicious start. When Kate planned things, they stayed planned.
“Maybe you should have had someone else in charge of Christmas,” said Emmie glumly.
“You can’t control the weather—or the German planes,” Kate said sleepily, but Emmie wasn’t mollified.
It helped to wake up on Christmas morning and see the sun shining on the snow, and the delight of the other girls when they stumbled into breakfast to be greeted by Captain Linoleum, a six-foot-tall roll of linoleum with a face chalked by Nell, a khaki cap, stick arms holding a Smith Unit “comfort bag” with a generous check from the class of 1904, and a ribbon-decked wastebasket at his feet （Kate’s, borrowed and bedecked） holding a pile of presents.
“Captain Linoleum offers his Christmas greetings to the Unit and will soon unroll himself on the barrack floor to warm our feet,” said Emmie breathlessly, distributing such luxuries as hot water bottles, briquettes, and all-weather socks amid cries of delight, while Marie’s contribution, coffee, real coffee with real cream from their own cows, steamed on the table in their red-and-white cups that looked more like bowls.
“New phonograph records! Thank goodness! I thought if I had to hear Alice playing Caruso’s ‘O Sole Mio’ one more time, I was going to scream!”
“Oh, look, this one’s a fox-trot. We can dance it with the boys tonight.”
“In our hobnailed boots?”
“Better than our rubber rain boots.”
“I knew I forgot to pack my dancing slippers.”
“Socks! Socks without holes! I may avoid frostbite yet.”
“And cream for chilblains!” Emmie said happily. They all had chilblains, and nasty things they were. “That nice doctor in the hospital in Nesle told me what to get—he says it’s a sovereign remedy.”
“Dr. Stapleton?” said Kate, glancing at Julia.
“Make sure it doesn’t have arsenic in it,” commented Julia shortly.
“Didn’t people used to use arsenic for their complexions?” asked Alice. “Or was that belladonna?”
“Hand it here,” said Dr. Stringfellow, and sniffed. “Well, it won’t kill you, at least.”
“I don’t care if it kills me,” said Nell fervently. “I’m putting it on now.”
There were parcels from home as well, parcels and mail. Emmie’s mother had sent a letter and Emmie’s heart lifted as she opened it, only to plunge again when she saw it was only a series of clippings, press related to the passing of the suffrage act in New York last month, her mother holding a banner.