“Isn’t she a cunning little girl?” said Lucy. “I wish they weren’t Germans. I don’t know what is the matter with their mother. I suppose she’s poor and worried.”
“Probably she’s thinking of the farm they lost,” said Larry. Then, putting Franz and his family out of his mind as they began mounting the slope which showed the approach of the hospital clearing, “Can’t you get a holiday and come to Coblenz, Lucy? I’m lonely without you or Bob. I’m losing my morale.”
All three of the others laughed at his gloomy voice, and Larry remarked with smouldering resentment, “It’s always that way when I get the blues. I’m laughed at. I’m considered a light-hearted soldier, and if I’m anything else I get no sympathy.”
“Yes you do, Larry—plenty from me,” Lucy protested. “But, you see, I count on you a lot myself, so I have to laugh at the idea of your getting low in your mind, or I’d feel twice as lost as I do alone.”
“Is that plain to you, Captain Eaton?” asked Armand, amused, and Larry, smiling in spite of himself, said more cheerfully:
“That’s a real Lucy explanation. Well, I’ll have to carry on in the Home Sector and play up to my part.”
“Other people have had to,” said Lucy, glancing at Michelle. She could not yet look into her friend’s face without remembering with a warm thrill of admiration the almost hopeless days of captivity when Michelle’s splendid courage and cheerfulness had spurred her to equal fortitude. “I’m afraid I don’t quite stand on my own legs when trouble comes,” she added, with some irrelevance for those who could not follow her thoughts. “I always need someone to keep me going.”
“I don’t know. You’ve stood up pretty well, I think,” said Larry, more eager in her defense than in his own. “For instance, the time you——”
“Escaped from Château-Plessis,” broke in Michelle, with equal enthusiasm. “There was not anyone to push you to the lines of the Alliés, or to shut the Germans’ eyes.”
“And how about the night you flew with me into Germany?” persisted Larry. “I didn’t encourage you then, that’s sure.”