“Pshaw! I shall be all right,” Tom declared. “The only thing is, I am sorry that he has made the date for me so that I can’t go down to Paris with you, and later see you aboard the ship at Brest. But this has been arranged a long time; and I must be with my boys when they go back from the rest camp to the front again.”
Ruth recovered herself quickly. She gave him her good hand and squeezed his in a hearty fashion.
“Don’t mind, Tom,” she said. “If this war is pretty near over, as you believe, you will not be long behind me in taking ship for home.”
“Right you are, Ruthie Fielding,” he agreed cheerfully.
But neither of them—and both were imaginative enough, in all good conscience!—dreamed how soon nor in what manner Tom Cameron would follow Ruth to sea when she was homeward bound. Nor did the girl consider how much of a thrilling nature might happen to them both before they would see each other again.
Tom Cameron left the hospital at Clair that afternoon to make all haste to the aviation camp where he was to meet his friend and college-mate, Ralph Stillinger, the American ace. Ruth was helped by the hospital matron herself to prepare for an automobile trip to Lyse, from which town she could entrain for Paris.
It was at Lyse that Ruth had first been stationed in her Red Cross work; so she had friends there. And it was a very dear little friend of hers who came to drive the automobile for Ruth when she left Clair. Henriette Dupay, the daughter of a French farmer on the outskirts of the village, had begged the privilege of taking “Mademoiselle Americaine” to Lyse.
“Ma foi!” gasped plump little Henriette, or “Hetty” as almost everybody called her, “how pale you are, Mademoiselle Ruth. The bad, bad Boches, that they should have caused you this annoyance.”
“I am only glad that the Germans did no more harm around the hospital than to injure me,” Ruth said. “It was providential, I think.”
“But no, Mademoiselle!” cried the French girl, letting in her clutch carefully when the engine of the motor began to purr smoothly, “it cannot be called ‘providential.’ This is a serious loss for us all. Oh, we feel it! Your going away from Clair is a sorrow for all.”