“Nine,” corrected Mrs. Rutherford briskly. “Now—”
“Nine?” Maud appeared to be having difficulty speaking. “No one told us we’d be offering aid from the frontline trench!”
“We can hardly help villagers rebuild their lives from Paris, can we?” said Mrs. Rutherford in the same tones of exaggerated patience Emmie imagined she used on students who mistranslated Homer. It was a tone Emmie had heard frequently from her own professors, in a variety of subjects. “Now, our entire usefulness rests on our ability to travel between the villages. Our first order of operation is to retrieve our trucks. Our chauffeurs will go directly to Brest to fetch the trucks.” She consulted her notes. “Miss Shaw, Miss Patton, Miss Cooper, you’ll be in charge of the Ford trucks. Miss Moran, Miss Englund, you will share responsibility for the White truck.”
Kate sat very still, her face dangerously expressionless. “I’ve never driven a White truck. Only a Chalmers touring car.”
“And I’ve never driven a Ford,” chimed in Liza. She thought for a moment. “Or a White.”
“You’ll learn,” said Mrs. Rutherford, obviously considering this an entirely irrelevant interruption. “As for the rest of us, we shall be engaged in seeing to our papers and securing the necessaries we need to bring to Grécourt. We shall need upwards of sixty chickens and at least four cows.”
“Cows?” echoed Maud. “Did you say cows?”
“Or vaches, if one wants to get into the local spirit.”
No one did.
Mrs. Rutherford sighed. “Cows have one great advantage, Miss Randolph. They create milk. We will have eleven villages in our charge, with nearly two thousand souls relying upon us. There are babies without mothers; children wasting away from want of good, nourishing food. So we shall have cows.”
“But . . . I’ve never had anything to do with cows.”
Mrs. Rutherford squeezed Maud’s shoulder, looking deep into her eyes. “You can do anything you set your mind to. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Maud’s mouth opened and closed. She looked less like a cow and more like an outraged fish.
“I do have some books on animal husbandry for anyone who would like to do some reading. . . . Here is an excellent manual on the keeping of chickens. Miss Randolph, would you care to have it? I believe you will find it most informative.”
“I’ll take it,” said Emmie quickly, since Maud looked about ready to lay an egg in rage.
“Excellent.” Mrs. Rutherford turned the full force of her smile on her and Emmie felt her spirits, inexplicably, lifting. “You shall be in charge of our chickens, Miss . . . Van Alden, until our agriculturalist arrives. Now, is there anything else?”
No one dared venture anything else.
Mrs. Rutherford cast a benevolent smile in their general direction and drifted out, her ever-present notebook clasped to her side.
“I knew I’d be called on to do obstetrical work,” commented Julia to no one in particular, “but I hadn’t expected to turn veterinarian.”
“That’s Betsy for you,” said Dr. Stringfellow with a certain grim satisfaction. She had, Emmie remembered being told, been Mrs. Rutherford’s roommate at Smith, back in the nineties. “She’ll have us all milking cows and liking it.”
“Oh, not you,” said Maud, too indignant to be politic. “You’ll be too busy doctoring! But the rest of us . . .”
“I hope there aren’t goats,” said Miss Patton. Emmie could see her hand go to the pocket where the silver flask was kept, clutching it like a talisman. “I’ve never gotten on with goats. My grandmother kept goats. They were dreadful.”
“I wonder if the children would like to help build chicken coops?” mused Miss Dawlish.
Maud glared at her. “Well, I think it’s insane. Cows and chickens!”
“She does have a point about the milk,” said Liza, and just as quickly subsided again.
“You milk the cows, then,” said Maud crossly.
“I don’t think she means us to milk them,” said Emmie. “I think the villagers are meant to do that. We’re simply to procure them and stable them. Does one stable a cow?”
No one knew.
“My uncle has a farm in Ohio,” said Miss Englund. “But I grew up in Cleveland. Our milk came in glass bottles from a little wagon.”
Kate laughed, a sharp, bitter laugh. “What a useless bunch we are.”