“Have a care! A broken shoulderbone is enough,” gasped Ruth. “I am looking for no other ornament at present, thank you.”
“We are going to take you to Madame Picolet’s,” Helen declared the next minute, as they left the great train shed and found a taxicab. “You would not disappoint her, would you? She so wants you with her while you remain in Paris.”
“Of course,” said Ruth, who had a warm feeling for the French teacher with whom she had been so friendly at Briarwood Hall. “And she has such a cosy and quiet little place.”
But after Ruth had rested from her train journey, Madame Picolet’s apartment did not prove to be so quiet a place. Besides Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone, there were a lot of other young women whom Ruth knew in Paris, working for the Red Cross or for other war institutions.
Of all their clique, Ruth had been the only girl who had worked right up on the battleline and had really seen much of the war. The visitors wanted to know all about it. And that Ruth had been injured by a Hun bomb made her all the more interesting to these young American women who, if they were not all of the calibre of the girl of the Red Mill, were certainly in earnest and interested in their own part of the work.
The surgeons had been wise, perhaps, in advising Ruth to take boat as soon as possible for the American side of the Atlantic. The Red Cross authorities gave her but a few days in Paris before she had to go on to Brest—that great port which the United States had built over for its war needs.
Helen and Jennie insisted on going with her to Brest. Indeed, Ruth found herself so weak that she was glad to have friends with her. She knew, however, that there would be those aboard the Admiral Pekhard, the British transport ship to which she was assigned, who would give her any needed attention during the voyage.
Up to the hour of sailing, Ruth received messages and presents—especially flowers—from friends she was leaving behind in France. Down to the ship came a boy from a famous florist in Paris—having traveled all the way by mail train carrying a huge bunch of roses.
“It’s from Tom,” cried Helen excitedly, “I bet a penny!”
“What a spendthrift you are, Helen,” drawled Jennie. But she watched Ruth narrowly as the latter opened the sealed letter accompanying the flowers.