"We'll soon be ready for the big hospital scene, Ruth, and also for the one where you try to get away with the papers, Alice," said Mr. Pertell to the two girls one day. "And, in order that everything may run smoothly I've made a little change in the scenario. I'm going to have a preliminary hospital scene. In that you will be a sort of orderly, or assistant nurse, Ruth. And there comes an emergency in which you do so well that you are sent for to be a nurse in one of the big hospitals maintained near the front. That will make the story more logical.
"So we'll have one of those hospital scenes to-day. I'll stage a small engagement, and have a number of men wounded. They'll be brought in, and there will be a night scene. The doctors and other nurses go off duty, and you are in charge. An emergency occurs—maybe a bandage slips from an artery and you sit and hold the wound until a doctor can come and tie the artery again. We'll work it out as we go along."
"Is there anything for me?" asked Alice.
"No, your part will stand all right as it is until you get to the big hospital scene. Come on now, Ruth; we'll have a rehearsal."
The rehearsal went off well, and the little change promised to strengthen the story of the war play. The hospital was set up near Mr. Apgar's corn-crib.
"And maybe that'll be a good thing," he said. "If you folks use enough of them there disinfectants and carbolic acid, you may scare away all the rats and mice that eat my corn in the winter."
"Oh! will there be rats and mice?" asked Ruth, apprehensively.
"Not in the hospital," said Mr. Pertell with a laugh. "It will be strictly sanitary—as much so as things were in the days of sixty-three."
The fight between the two forces was staged some distance away from the hospital, and the guns soon began to rattle and to roar again. The girls did not mind them by this time, however.
This skirmish had no particular part in the general story, but it was filmed just the same, as it could be spliced in with the other fighting scenes.