Back in the hospital Lucy worked hard at the big pile of garments with their long, ragged tears. Her neck ached and her fingers, after two hours, but she kept steadily at it, with the satisfying sense of being one of the hospital workers; of doing, right where the product of her hands was so urgently needed, what she had often done from far away. When the morning was half over Elizabeth came back through the garden, walking slowly with her loaded baskets, and presently she came empty-handed into the room where Lucy was.
“Hello, Elizabeth!” exclaimed Lucy, tired of her own thoughts and welcoming her old nurse with a smile. “Are you coming to sew with me? I’d love some one to talk to.”
“Yes, for a few minutes I help you,” said Elizabeth in a quick, earnest voice that made Lucy look up at her curiously as she continued. “Because I something have to tell you that no one must hear, so I sit by you and softly speak.”
Always when Elizabeth was excited her English grew worse, and now Lucy, astonished at her words and manner, stopped sewing and asked hurriedly, “What is it, Elizabeth? Oh, tell me quickly—there’s nobody to hear.”
Not convinced of this, Elizabeth gave a sharp glance outside the open door and, taking a torn garment on her lap, drew her chair close to Lucy’s by the window before she answered. “I have Mr. Bob seen, and he gave me a message.”
“Bob!” gasped Lucy, her terrified eyes devouring Elizabeth’s face. “Oh, what is he doing here!”
“He is not here now,” said Elizabeth quickly. “He has got safe away.” With her needle poised between her fingers while she forgot all pretense of sewing, she told Lucy in a voice just above a whisper of her morning’s adventure.
Lucy heard her in stupefied silence, only her glowing cheeks and shining eyes giving sign of her overpowering excitement. Other feelings, too, beside joy at this news of her brother, showed in her face. A puzzled wonder was strongest, with the realization of her old nurse’s German sympathies. When Elizabeth came to the part of her story where Bob contrived to drop his message and she to decipher it, Lucy could contain herself no longer.
“But how did you know there was a message hidden there? How could Bob know you would find it?” she burst out, speaking but a part of her confused thoughts aloud.
For answer Elizabeth first looked earnestly into her face, as though she read clearly what Lucy would not say—that she wondered greatly at Bob’s trust in her—then putting down her needle clasped her thin hands anxiously together. “Miss Lucy,” she said a little shakily, “I hope you believe me, because I nothing tell you but the truth. Did I not tell you I saw Mr. Bob here a month ago, when the Allies take the town? At that time we talk, and Mr. Bob explain to me a way that he could a message send, if he needs. He have the charge to let fall those papers—you know—with speeches of the president, over the German lines. He show me how with a pin he could a message make that no one would see, if they had no thought for it. When he said this he spoke of war news only—of course he not think then that you be left here if the Germans take the town.”