"Getting tired, are you, Jeanne?" asked Jack presently, noticing that the child dragged her little feet at times, despite all efforts to show a brave front.
Without waiting for an answer Jack scooped her up in his arms, and persisted in carrying her the rest of the way. Before they reached the field hospital poor little tired Jeanne was fast asleep, snuggled in those protecting arms, and as Jack looked down on her baby face, seen in the first lights he came to, he renewed his vow to stand by the orphan through thick and thin.
But here was the long low shed hastily put together, and fashioned so that it could be taken down and moved farther along to the new front every few days. Through the opening he glimpsed figures in white, bearing the symbolic Red Cross on headpiece and left arm, moving about among the white cots, attending to the wounded soldiers.
It was not long before Jack discovered the particular nurse for whom he was looking. Nellie Leroy may have seemed young for such duties, but what she lacked in age she more than made up for by her wonderful skill. Indeed the head surgeon many times declared that the girl was a born nurse; and when there was a particularly interesting case to be attended he made it a point to see that the patient was placed in Nellie's ward.
So Jack and his burden appeared before Nellie. She of course looked very much surprised to see him, but the smile on her pretty face told Jack his coming was most welcome to Harry's sister. Nellie thought a great deal of Tom Raymond but she liked Jack also.
"Put the child on this empty cot, and then tell me all about her," said Nellie. "Who is she and how do you come to be bringing her here? I hope it isn't because the poor baby has been injured; though those Boches seem to be equal to anything that is cruel and terrible."
"I'll be only too glad to explain everything, Nellie," Jack said, after he had done as she told him, and watched, perhaps half enviously, while the tender-hearted nurse bent over and kissed sleeping Jeanne on her forehead. "Can you spare a little time just now? The story isn't going to be very long; although I'm in no hurry to get back."
"It happens that we're through much sooner than usual tonight," she assured him. "And besides, I'll ask Mollie King to look after my patients, as hers were mostly taken south in the last detachment of ambulances bound for the base hospitals. Here, sit down on this bench, Jack, and I'll be back in a minute. But first, how is Tom?"
On the young nurse's return Jack told his story in detail. Nellie listened with deep interest. She would have been better satisfied if modest Jack had only been more enlightening with regard to his thrilling engagement with the Hun fliers; but then she knew his failings did not lie in the field of boasting, and so she had to picture those incidents for herself.
Jack was more inclined to go into details when Jeanne came into the story.