Lucy, not having any defense ready, said nothing. But she did not look particularly repentant. Miss Pearse had come face to face with her outside the hospital when she returned the morning after Bob’s visit. Astonished at catching sight of her charge, whom she thought still in bed and asleep, she had insisted on a complete explanation. Lucy had received a scolding, but underneath all of her severity, Miss Pearse could not hide the sympathetic heart that beat in warm response to Lucy’s hope and anxiety. Her lecture had weakly broken down into a fire of questions about Bob’s daring flight, which left Lucy feeling less remorseful than Miss Pearse intended.
Now, after waiting a moment while their passes were inspected by a deliberate German sentry, she followed the nurse into the hospital, saying, “Of course I’ll go, Miss Pearse. Right after breakfast? Just let me tell Father good-morning first.”
Colonel Gordon was sitting up in bed, for his convalescence had now really begun, and his thin face, from which the tan had almost faded, was tinged with the first suggestion of returning health. His eyes, though, held a sombre look in their gray depths, and at sight of Lucy it did not leave them, even when he smiled cheerfully and held out a welcoming hand.
Lucy had told her father everything about Bob’s visit and the news that he had brought, and in the thrilling story Colonel Gordon’s fear for his son’s safety had been almost outweighed by admiration of his pluck and skill. His face had lighted up as he listened, and Lucy had repeated the details of Bob’s message and landing twice over. It meant much to the wounded officer to feel that, if he himself must remain a helpless prisoner of war, his son at least was doing a brave part alone.
Lucy had not told him a word about her visit to Captain Beattie’s prison. She had not accomplished what she hoped, and she dreaded lest her father’s fears for her safety might lead him to make her promise not to go there again. Just now she felt she could not give up the one chance that might mean so much. And had she not given a promise, too, that she would do what she could to make the young Englishman’s lot more bearable?
This morning she told her father of her intended trip across the town for the supplies doled out by the German conquerors. Colonel Gordon lay watching his daughter with anxious eyes as she sat beside him, thankful to see that her cheeks had not yet lost their color, in spite of all she had endured, nor her hazel eyes their brightness.
“I’m all right, Father, so long as I have work to do,” said Lucy, reading his troubled thoughts. “It was sitting idle and worrying that I couldn’t stand. Now that you are getting well, and we know the worst about the town, I can grin and bear it.”
“A weight is off my mind since I know Bob has told your mother we are safe,” said Colonel Gordon. “As for grinning and bearing it, our troops won’t be satisfied to do that, thank heaven. They’ll push through again somehow—they must! I don’t know what I’d do if I thought I was a prisoner for the rest of the war.”
Lucy was silent, but again she resolved to tell her father nothing of the secret Captain Beattie held, until she had revisited the prison and accomplished at least a part of what she sought.
“I must go to breakfast now, Father,” she said, after a moment. “I’ll come in to see you again just as soon as I get back from my morning’s work.”