Ruth saw the professor when they landed. The Italian chef she did not see at all. Nor did Ruth Fielding see anybody who looked like Mrs. Rose Mantel.
“I may be quite wrong in all my suspicions,” she thought. “I would better say nothing about them. To cause the authorities to arrest entirely innocent people would be a very wicked thing, indeed.”
Besides, there was so much to do and to see that the girl of the Red Mill could not keep her suspicions alive. This unknown world she and her mates had come to quite filled their minds with new thoughts and interests.
Their first few hours in France was an experience long to be remembered. Ruth might have been quite bewildered had it not been that her mind was so set upon the novel sights and sounds about her.
“I declare I don’t know whether I am a-foot or a-horseback!” Clare Biggars said. “Let me hang on to your coat-tail, Ruth. I know you are real and United Statesy. But these funny French folk——
“My! they are like people out of a story book, after all, aren’t they? I thought I’d seen most every kind of folk at the San Francisco Fair; but just nobody seems familiar looking here!”
Before they were off the quay, several French women, who could not speak a word of English save “’Ello!” welcomed the Red Cross workers with joy. At this time Americans coming to help France against her enemies were a new and very wonderful thing. The first marching soldiers from America were acclaimed along the streets and country roads as heroes might have been.
An old woman in a close-fitting bonnet and ragged shawl—not an over-clean person—took Ruth’s hand in both hers and patted it, and said something in her own tongue that brought the tears to the girl’s eyes. It was such a blessing as Aunt Alvirah had murmured over her when the girl had left the Red Mill.
She and Clare, with several of the other feminine members of the supply unit were quartered in an old hotel almost on the quay for their first night ashore. It was said that some troop trains had the right-of-way; so the Red Cross workers could not go up to Paris for twenty-four hours.
Somebody made a mistake. It could not be expected that everything would go smoothly. The heads of the various Red Cross units were not infallible. Besides, this supply unit to which Ruth belonged really had no head as yet. The party at the seaside hotel was forgotten.