The head nurse laughed, looking kindly at Lucy’s pretty face, lighted by the smile that her unaffectedness made very attractive. “I’ll find plenty for you to do, don’t worry,” she said confidently. “When nothing else turns up, go about among the convalescents and talk to them of home.”
“Are there bad cases here? What sort, mostly?” Miss Pearse asked.
“Some are men who have been gassed and their lungs are injured. Those are the discouraged ones who think they can never get well. Then we have a good many with broken limbs slowly mending, and some recovering from pneumonia and trench fever. There are about eighty in all, and most of them getting on splendidly, if they would only forget their homesickness and that they must spend Christmas in Germany.”
“U-um, but it’s not so easy to forget that,” murmured Lucy, understandingly. “And, though of course this hospital has fine air and all that, it’s not a very cheerful place, do you think? With all these German woods shutting it in?”
“German woods are just like any other woods, Lucy,” said Miss Pearse laughing. “Don’t be making trouble. We’re ready now, Miss Webster.”
The hospital wards were nearly empty for a part of the day, during which almost all the patients got up and sat on the verandas, or were wheeled about if they could not walk. Lucy was surprised to see a good number of French soldiers scattered among the Americans, and looking a good deal more cheerful than her own countrymen, as though they knew that their return home could not be much longer postponed.
Miss Webster explained to her: “These Frenchmen were in need of special treatment—we have mineral baths here. Or else they were in American hospitals and were brought along with other convalescents. They will almost all go before Christmas.”
Lucy was put to work in the diet kitchen, which she left at lunch time to carry trays to those of the convalescents whose capricious appetites needed special encouragement. The trays were numbered and so were the chairs in which the invalids reclined, but as Lucy, carrying a tray holding chicken broth and biscuits and numbered forty-five, approached the chair bearing that number, the occupant got up and, walking slowly down the veranda steps, strolled off toward the edge of the clearing.
The man was a French officer, a blond of tall and powerful build, though now his blue uniform hung loosely on his shrunken frame and his slow steps were a trifle uncertain. Lucy put down the tray and ran after him, calling out, “Quarante-cinq! Quarante-cinq!” Then as she neared him and saw the insignia on his uniform she changed her form of address to, “Monsieur le capitaine! Attendez, s’il vous plait?”
The Frenchman turned around and seeing Lucy pointing with expressive gesture to the veranda where the soup was cooling on the deserted chair he smiled and took off his cap, saying with quick apology, “Pardon, Mademoiselle.” Then changing into good English he continued, “I am sorry to have made you follow me. Thank you very much.”