They lifted Ruth, who remained unconscious, from the bed to the stretcher. They descended with her to the ground floor, Jennie and Helen following in the wake. On both of the main floors of the hospital nurses came to the doors of the wards to learn what had happened. Although the whole hospital had been shaken by the bombs, there had been no casualty within its precincts save this.
“Why should it have to be Ruth?” groaned Helen. “To think of our Ruthie being wounded—the only one!”
They shut the two American girls out of the operating room, of course. The Médecin Chef himself came hurriedly to see what was needed for the injured girl. Mademoiselle Americaine, as Ruth was called about the hospital by the grateful French people, was very popular and much beloved.
Her two girl friends waited in great anxiety outside the operating room. At last Madame la Directrice came out. She smiled at the anxious girls. That was the most glorious smile—so Jennie Stone said afterward—that was ever beheld.
“A fracture of the shoulder bone; her sweet flesh cut and bruised, but not deeply, Mesdemoiselles. No scar will be left, the surgeon assures me. And when she recovers from the anesthetic——Oh, la, la! she will have nothing to do but get well. It means a long furlough, however, for Mademoiselle Americaine.”
It was two hours later that Helen and Jennie sat, one on either side of Ruth’s couch, in the private room that had been given to the wounded Red Cross worker. Ruth’s eyes opened heavily, she blinked at the light, and then her vision swept first Helen and then Jennie.
“Oh, such a dream!” she murmured. “I dreamed about coming to Cheslow and the Red Mill again, when I was a little girl. And I dreamed all about Briarwood, and our trips about the country, and our adventures in school and out. I dreamed even of coming here to France, and all that has happened. Such a dream!
“Mercy’s sake, girls! What has happened to me? I’m all bandaged up like a grand blessé!”
CHAPTER III—IT’S ALL OVER!
The shoulder had to be put in a cast; but the healing of the cuts and bruises on Ruth Fielding’s back was a small matter. Only——