Elise, waiting for her summons to go forward, and understanding nothing of the business that was going on, threw her thoughts backward. She saw herself the idolized child of the gay, rich young couple in the great château, where long painted lines of powdered and frilled and armor-clad ancestors looked down at her from the long galleries, and where dozens of willing servants danced to do her bidding. Then the picture changed, and with the roll of drums and the thunder of cannon she saw the hated foe march across her land, destroying as they came. Father, mother, grandmother, home, riches; all went down as under a devouring tide. Then the promises of her Monsieur Bob, and after long, long weary days spent with the ladies of the Red Cross came the journey into the Unknown, that trip across an ocean that was to forever separate her from a past that was too terrible for a little girl to have known.
To have found refuge in Mrs. Hargrave’s tender arms, to have won such love and such friends—to be able to be a Girl Scout—
Elise turned her eyes, brimming with sudden tears, to the flag.
“Never, never will I zem disappoint!” she whispered tenderly, using as best she could the unfamiliar words of her adopted tongue.
CHAPTER IX
At last Elise saw the Captain glance in her direction as the whistle blew once more for attention and the Captain commanded, “Fall in!” A look of serious interest appeared on the faces of the girls as they formed in a horseshoe, the Captain and the Lieutenant standing in the gap and the American flag spread out before them.
Elise, with Helen beside her, walked to a place just inside the circle and stood facing the Captain. In the Lieutenant’s hands were the staff and hat, the shoulder knot, badge and neckerchief of the Tenderfoot Elise.
She could not refrain from a glance at them. How she had longed to wear all those things; the insignia of everything she had learned to admire and look up to in the girls of America!