All during the hot walk home Lucy thought of Michelle and wondered how soon she should be able to see her again. That afternoon as soon as she sat down to work on the torn linen with Elizabeth, she asked her old nurse how she could manage to visit her new friend. “You see, I suppose she works in the French hospital with her mother, so I don’t know how we can do any work together. Will the Germans let me go to her house?” she asked doubtfully.
“The Germans here not so many are that they will bother to see what you do, unless you the town try to leave,” was Elizabeth’s answer. “When I in the morning to the cottage in the meadows go, you may come with me and stop at the house of your friend.”
“Oh, do you know where she lives?” cried Lucy, overjoyed.
“Surely do I. Near by to where stood the sentry when we passed him the other night.”
Lucy left off working toward sundown to go and sit with her father, and in him she had an interested listener to Elizabeth’s plan for visiting Michelle.
“I’m so glad you’ve found a friend, little daughter,” he said, with sober satisfaction. “It must be so almighty hard and lonesome for you here. But remember, you’re never to cross the town even that far without Elizabeth or some one else from the hospital.”
Lucy nodded, thinking rather guiltily of her determination to visit Captain Beattie on the first night that Elizabeth was off duty.
Just now, though, she had only one thought in her head. It is no small thing to find a companion one’s own age after many days spent among grownups. And this girl had appealed to Lucy from the first glimpse she caught of her in the street a week ago. Lucy was not given to rushing headlong into friendships, but she did follow her impulses frankly, and on the whole did not often have reason to regret it.
By the following morning Elizabeth had forgotten all about Lucy’s inquiries of the day before, and looked up in surprise when she came early into the dining-room greeting her with, “Well, Elizabeth, when may we start?”
Lucy had risen at daybreak, obtained Miss Pearse’s consent to her plan, and arranged breakfast trays for the convalescents an hour under the nurse’s direction. Then she had sat with her father a while, for it was early in the day that he felt most rested and ready for conversation. Now she felt that it was time her wish was gratified, and sighed regretfully when Elizabeth answered: