"Well?" she said inquiringly, as Charlie ceased to speak.
"But I didn't think you'd have to make the trip. Isn't there anybody else, Miss Ruth?" and the young fellow was quite earnest now.
"Nobody," she said firmly. "No use telling me anything more, Charlie. For the very reason the trip is dangerous, you wouldn't want me to put it off on somebody else, would you?"
He said no more. The car rattled down into the little town, with its crooked, paved streets and its countless smells. Clair was the center of a farming community, and, in some cases, the human inhabitants and the dumb beasts lived very close together.
The hospital sprawled over considerable ground. It was but two stories in height, save at the back, where a third story was run up for the "cells" of the nurses and the other women engaged in the work. Ruth ran up at once to her own tiny room to pack her handbag before she did anything else.
The matron met her at the supply-room door when she came down. She was a voluble, if not volatile, Frenchwoman of certain age.
"I dread having you go, Mademoiselle Ruth," she said, with her arm about the girl. "I feel as though you were particularly in my care. If anything should happen to you——"
"You surely would not be blamed," said Ruth, smiling. "Somebody must go and why not I? Please send two orderlies to carry out these boxes. This list calls for a lot of supplies. Surely the ambulance will be filled."
Which was, indeed, the case. When she finally went downstairs, turning the key of her store-room over to the matron, the ambulance body was crowded with cases. The stretchers had been taken out before Charlie Bragg drove in. Ruth must occupy the seat beside him in front.
She did not keep him waiting, but ran down with her bag and crept in under the torn hood beside him. Several of the nurses stood in the door to call good-bye after her. The sentinel in the courtyard stood at attention as the car rolled out of the gate.