Nobody came to the hotel to inform them when the unit was to entrain. They were served very well by the hotel attendants and several chatty ladies, who could speak English, came to see them. But Ruth and the other girls had not come to France as tourists.
Finally, the girl of the Red Mill, with Clare Biggars, sallied forth to find the remainder of their unit. Fortunately, Ruth’s knowledge of the language was not superficial. Madame Picolet, her French teacher at Briarwood Hall, had been most thorough in the drilling of her pupils; and Madame was a Parisienne.
But when Ruth discovered that she and her friends at the seaside hotel had been left behind by the rest of the Red Cross contingent, she was rather startled, and Clare was angered.
“What do they think we are?” demanded the Western girl. “Of no account at all? Where’s our transportation? What do they suppose we’ll do, dumped down here in this fishing town? What——”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Ruth laughed. “Don’t lose your temper, my dear,” she advised soothingly. “If nothing worse than this happens to us——”
She immediately interviewed several railroad officials, arranged for transportation, got the passports of all viséed, and, in the middle of the afternoon, they were off by slow train to the French capital.
“We can’t really get lost, girls,” Ruth declared. “For we are Americans, and Americans, at present, in France, are objects of considerable interest to everybody. We’ll only be a day late getting to the city on the Seine.”
When they finally arrived in Paris, Ruth knew right where to go to reach the Red Cross supply department headquarters. She had it all written down in her notebook, and taxicabs brought the party in safety to the entrance to the building in question.
As the girls alighted from the taxis Clare seized Ruth’s wrist, whispering:
“Why! there’s that Professor Perry again—the one that came over with us on the steamer. You remember?”