badly, incredibly left. Johnny was in the movement, doing the thing that
mattered. Further, Johnny might ultimately be killed in doing it; her
Johnny. Everything else shrank and was little. What were books? What was
anything? Jane wanted to fight in the war. The war was damnable, but it
was worse to be out of it. One was such an utter outsider. It wasn't
fair. She could fight as well as Johnny could. Jane went about white and
sullen, with her world tumbling into bits about her.

Mr. Potter said in the press, and Mrs. Potter in the home, 'The people of
England have a great opportunity before them. We must all try to rise to
it'--as if the people of England were fishes and the opportunity a fly.

Opportunity, thought Jane. Where is it? I see none. It was precisely
opportunity which the war had put an end to.

'The women of England must now prove that they are worthy of their men,'
said the Potter press.

'I dare say,' thought Jane. Knitting socks and packing stores and
learning first aid. Who wanted to do things like that, when their
brothers had a chance to go and fight in France? Men wouldn't stand it,
if it was the other way round. Why should women always get the dull jobs?
It was because they bore them cheerfully; because they didn't really, for
the most part, mind, Jane decided, watching the attitude of her mother
and Clare. The twins, profoundly selfish, but loving adventure and
placidly untroubled by nerves or the prospect of physical danger, saw no
hardship in active service. (This was before the first winter and the
development of trench warfare, and people pictured to themselves
skirmishes in the open, exposed to missiles, but at least keeping warm).