“Will you really fly, Tom?” Ruth asked.
“Ralph has promised me a regular circus—looping the loop, and spiraling, and all the tricks of flying.”
“But you won’t fly into battle?” questioned Helen anxiously. “Of course he won’t take you over the German lines?”
“Probably not. They don’t much fancy carrying amateurs into a fight. You see, only two men can ride in even those big fighting planes with the liberty motors; and both of them should be trained pilots, so that if anything happens to the man driving the machine, the other can jump in and take his place.”
“Ugh!” shuddered his sister. “Don’t talk about it any more. I don’t want to know when you go up, Tommy. I should be beside myself all the time you were in the air.”
So they talked about Ruth’s chances of going home instead. After all, as she could be of no more use in Red Cross work for so long a time, the girl of the Red Mill began to look forward with some confidence to the home going.
As she had told her girl friends that very day when the hospital had been bombed and she had been hurt, the sweetest words in the ears of the exile are “homeward bound!” And she expected to be bound for home—for Cheslow and the Red Mill—in a very few weeks.
Her case had been reported to Paris headquarters; and whether she wished it or not, a furlough had been ordered and she would be obliged to sail from Brest on or about a certain date. The sea voyage would help her to recuperate; and by that time her shoulder would be out of the plaster cast in which Dr. Soutre had fixed it. Whether she desired to be so treated or not, the Red Cross considered her an invalid—a “grande blessée.”
So, as the days passed, Ruth Fielding gradually found that she suffered the idea of return to America with a better mind. The more she thought of going home, the more the desire grew in her soul to be there.
It was about this time that the letter came from Uncle Jabez Potter. A letter from Uncle Jabez seemed almost as infrequent as the blooming of a century plant.