Ruth Fielding had already become inured to the sights and sounds of hospital life at Lyse, and to its work as well. Of course she was not under the physical strain that the Red Cross nurses endured; but her heart was racked by sympathy for the blessés as greatly as the nurses’ own.
Starting without knowing anyone in the big hospital, she quickly learned her duties, and soon showed, too, her fitness for the special work assigned her. Her responsibilities merely included the arranging of special supplies and keeping the key of her supply room; but the particular strain attending her work was connected with the spiritual needs of the wounded.
Their gratitude, she soon found, was a thing to touch and warm the heart. Fretful they might be, and as unreasonable as children at times. But in the last count they were all—even the hardest of them—grateful for what she could do for them.
She had read (who has not?) of the noble sacrifices of that great woman whose work for the helpless soldiers in hospital antedates the Red Cross and its devoted workers—Florence Nightingale. She knew how the sick and dying soldiers in the Crimea kissed her shadow on their pillows as she passed their cots, and blessed her with their dying breaths.
The roughest soldier, wounded unto death, turns to the thought of mother, of wife, of sweetheart, of sister—indeed, turns to any good woman whose voice soothes him, whose hand cools the fever of his brow.
Ruth Fielding began to understand better than ever before this particular work that she was now called upon to perform, and that she was so well fitted to perform.
She was cheerful as well as sympathetic; she was sane beyond most young girls in her management of men—many men.
“Bless you, Mademoiselle!” declared the matron, “of course they will make love to you. Let them. It will do them good—the poor blessés—and do you no harm. And you have a way with you!”
Ruth got over being worried by amatory bouts with the wounded poilus after a while. Her best escape was to offer to write letters to the afflicted one’s wife or sweetheart. That was part of her work—to attend to as much of the correspondence of the helplessly wounded as possible.
And all the time she gave sympathy and care to these strangers she hoped, if Tom Cameron should chance to be wounded, some woman would be as kind to him!