“It looks like a regular workshop. Oh, Michelle, I’m so glad you thought of it!” exclaimed Lucy, looking around the hall with admiring eyes. Almost every convalescent soldier had a lump of clay or some willow splits in his fingers, of which he was trying to fashion something pretty or useful, generally without much success. A few of the poilus and Germans were expert basket weavers, and one potter was among them. The rest knew enough to get along with help. As for the Americans, they caused more amusement than had been heard among the men in a long time. Not one of them could weave the willow splits into a symmetrical shape, and only one succeeded in making of the clay anything more than a dumpy jug. This was a little red-headed westerner, who formed his lump into a dozen animals in as many minutes, to the great interest of the Frenchmen about him, ending the exhibition with a figure of a cowboy on horseback, waving a lasso made of a willow sliver.
It was not the quality of the work that made the two girls proud and delighted at the result of their hard labor. It was the atmosphere of interested occupation and rivalry, so different from the listless melancholy that takes possession of a roomful of idle men. The work was trifling and almost useless, but it was far better than nothing, and Lucy felt well repaid for her hot walks and the heavy loads carried in her aching arms.
It was two days since her visit to the prison, and she had spent the intervals from work in vain attempts to scheme out a means of getting her precious paper to the Allied lines. One idea she communicated to Michelle, rather expecting to be laughed at.
“Do you think we could tame one of the pigeons that fly around the hospital roof, Michelle? It could take the message so easily.”
“But this is their home,” Michelle objected. “You must have a bird who longs to return across the lines—who is a stranger here. There were many like that guarded here last month by the French état-major. I do not know where they are now.”
“What an easy way that would be, and what a safe one,” Lucy thought this morning as she went back and forth among the convalescents, giving encouragement since she could not give advice, and seeing that each man had material to work with.
“Oh, how too bad we must give so much to the Boches!” whispered Michelle, as Lucy picked up a handful of splits for Paul Schwartz to finish his neat basket.
“But we have to,” said Lucy, resignedly. It was the sight of the German soldiers working away at the materials furnished by the hard efforts of the two little aides which had caused the German surgeon in charge to give Lucy a brisk nod of approval in passing. She felt more angry than gratified at this condescending reward for her trouble, but she knew his good will was necessary if they were to continue helping the French and Americans.
“I cannot stay long with you this afternoon,” said Michelle a few minutes later, when all the patients were again supplied with occupation. “Poor Maman does not get up to-day. She has a bad cold from coming in the rain from the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry, Michelle. Could I do anything to help? I suppose the French doctors can give you what she needs?”