"No," she said, and there was sharpness in her voice. "But I am much engaged in our hospital work—and you are not likely to be brought there, are you?"
Evidently he felt the bite in her question. He flushed and dropped his gaze. Her intimation was not to be mistaken. He seemed unlikely to be brought wounded to the hospital.
Before he could recover himself they were at the gate. Dolge opened the postern and the two girls stepped through, followed by the French officer. The young fellow in the American ambulance immediately hailed Ruth.
"Oh, I say, Miss Ruth!" he cried, "sorry to hunt you out this way, but you are needed down at the hospital."
"So I presume, or you would not have come for me, Charlie," she told him, smiling. "What is it?"
"Supplies needed for one of the field hospitals," he said. "And I tell you straight, Miss Ruth, they're in bad shape there. Not half enough help. The supply room of that station is all shot away—terrible thing."
"Oh, dear!" gasped Ruth. "Do you mean that the Germans have bombed it?"
"It wasn't an air raid. Yet it must have been done deliberately. They dropped a Jack Johnson right on that end of the hospital. Two orderlies hurt and the girl who ran the supply room killed. They want somebody to come right up there and arrange a new room and new stock."
"Oh! you won't go, Mademoiselle Ruth?" shrieked Henriette.
"It would be extremely dangerous," Major Marchand said. "Another shell might drop in the same place."