CHAPTER XIX
L’Envoi to Glorious France
A short time after, trunks were being brought down from the attic of the house at Versailles and being gradually packed. Other arrangements were also being made in a leisurely fashion for the closing of the house which Miss Patricia had rented only for a season.
She had grown impatient to return to her work in the devastated districts of France, for now that the war was over the appeal for food and other aid was growing more insistent than ever, and idleness, such as she felt the months at Versailles had represented, at no time really interested Miss Patricia Lord.
Captain Richard Burton had arrived in Versailles a week before and was compelled to leave for England within a short time on a special mission for the Red Cross.
The Camp Fire girls were therefore separating for the first time in many months, since Vera Lagerloff and Alice Ashton were to accompany Miss Lord and continue the relief work in France, while the other girls were going with Captain and Mrs. Burton to spend the summer in England.
Apparently definite arrangements of some character had been made for each person who shared Miss Patricia’s hospitality during the memorable spring in France, save the two members of her household, Marguerite Arnot and Julie Dupont and the new group of French Camp Fire girls, the little French midinettes, for whom Miss Patricia was acting as Camp Fire guardian and whom she apparently had taken under her special protection.
On this morning Marguerite Arnot and Julie Dupont were both at work in the big room which had been devoted to their use ever since their installation at the house in Versailles. At the same time they had continued their work they had received a generous recompense for their service, so that, as the two girls had been at no expense, they both possessed more money than at any previous time in their lives.
Julie was too young to do sewing of an important character; at present she was engaged in pulling basting threads from an evening dress of Mrs. Burton’s in which Marguerite Arnot had made a slight alteration.
She was frowning with her dark, heavy brows drawn close together and her lips puckered, yet in spite of her evident bad temper, she looked prettier and in better health than in a long time.
“I have something to tell you, Marguerite,” she began, “although you need not offer me advice in return.