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In a number of villages the work is well under way and within a week should be begun everywhere. I hope we can see it through. . . . The war has been “hotting up” as they say—but I’m not meant to be writing about any of that. (Will the censor strike that through, I wonder?) No matter. You’ll read about it in the New York Times well before you get this letter.

I have been so thoroughly enjoying my work, my play, my friends, and the weather, that I feel as though I should throw a ring into the sea to placate local deities—or is that only Venice?

—Miss Florence Lewes, ’01, to her brother, Mr. Thomas Lewes

March 1918

Grécourt, France

“It was three days before we could get a train and how those hens cackled.”

It was an utter cacophony in the living room of the new house. They’d just finished supper when Kate and Julia appeared out of nowhere, tugging three crates of hens between them. Anne had rushed to find some food to feed the prodigals, Florence was on her knees in front of the crates, inspecting the chickens, while Mrs. Barrett was looking on with an expression somewhere between apprehension and amusement, begging the chickens to spare the rug, which was only on loan.

It was amazing, thought Emmie, how very full the room felt with just two more people in it. She should be delighted, she knew. But instead, she felt vaguely apprehensive. Ever since the proposal to propose, she’d been living in a springtime sort of dream, all new grass and fluffy clouds. But Kate and Julia were—well, they weren’t the dreaming sort. It didn’t matter to Emmie that she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was engaged or engaged to be engaged. All that mattered was that there was Will DeWitt in the world, holding the line, writing her letters that ended with Yours to be yours.

But Kate would think it mattered, she knew. Kate would question his intentions and ask questions about the future—and they had discussed the future, they had; it was couched in poetry and daydream.

Had we but world enough and time . . . We would sit down, and think which way / To walk and pass our long love’s day.

Will was particularly fond of the metaphysical poets.

When they had world enough and time. That was one of their abiding preoccupations. Once the war was over, once they had world enough and time, what would they do with it? It was like a children’s game, playing house in absentia. Walks, he suggested. Amateur theatricals. He’d played Titania in a wig and someone’s sister’s frock at Harrow, and Emmie had teased him about it by return post. Oh Will, how thou art translated!

It was Shakespeare, and therefore against the rules, but he’d brought it on himself.

It was all very silly and the censors probably thought they were off their heads—or engaging in the most Byzantine sort of cipher known to man—but Emmie had never been happier, had never imagined being so happy, even if she knew that it was a fool’s paradise, that at any moment a German sniper or bomber could end it all with one well-placed missile. But they weren’t to think of that; they’d promised each other. Like an old-fashioned sundial, they would count only the happy hours.

She didn’t mistrust Will or his intentions. Only the war itself. And maybe, just a bit, herself. But she didn’t think Kate or Julia would see it that way. And this new Kate and Julia, a Kate and Julia who worked together, who had shared jokes and seemed to understand each other’s minds—that was more unsettling still.

Trying to make up for her ungenerous thoughts, Emmie took one of the odd, two-handled bowls from Anne and brought it to Kate. “Did you keep the chickens in the hotel all that time?”

Julia looked surprisingly human with her forehead smudged with soot from the train, her cheeks flushed from their long walk from the station, and her skirt stained with goodness only knew what from the chickens. “Madame would have dearly liked to evict us, but Kate fed her a dreadful line about war service and doing one’s bit.”

“It wasn’t a line! It was all true.” Kate’s lips quivered with suppressed amusement. “But she couldn’t very well throw us and our chickens out after that.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t just stick them in the soup pot,” said Nell.

“And take away a chicken from the service of France?” drawled Julia, raising her brows dramatically.

Kate balled up her cloth napkin and lobbed it at her.

“Children, children,” protested Mrs. Barrett, but she was laughing too.

And then the first bomb fell, making the walls of the house shake and George Washington fall face forward on the table.

“Oh no, we forgot the curtains!” Emmie stumbled to the windows. She yanked the fabric so hard she nearly brought the whole curtain down.

Another crash followed the first, closer this time. The hens cackled in distress in their coops, and outside they could hear a dog yelping.

“The pantry!” exclaimed Alice, and made a dash to extinguish the lamps there. A moment later, the house was plunged into darkness. “Owwwwww.”

“Are you all right?” Emmie called, bracing one hand against the piano to orient herself.

“The doorframe hit me,” said Alice, groping her way back into the room.

“Better than a bomb,” said Nell. For the benefit of their returning members, she added, “That’s the great drawback of the new house. The lighted windows are a positive invitation to the Hun to use as target practice.”

“It was careless of us to forget to draw the curtains,” said Emmie remorsefully. “They keep telling us it will be the big push any day now.”