She was a woman between thirty and forty years of age, slender, with brilliant blue eyes and dark hair; seated in a wheeled chair she was evidently recovering from a serious illness. About her there was a look of extreme delicacy, nevertheless her expression was gay, almost challenging.
“Do please let me get out of this absurd chair at once,” she demanded of the two girls who had charge of her. “After a little more of this I shall feel like a mummy! I am just as well as I ever was before that small piece of German shell chose me for its victim and turned Aunt Patricia into a true prophet of evil. How persistently she did object to my journey into southern France! But what an exquisite afternoon! I think one never appreciates the true value of sunshine until one has been shut away from it. And how peaceful the French country about us seems! Surely the Germans will never again overrun this portion of France!”
To understand the present scene, one must know that a number of months before, Mrs. Richard Burton, the famous American actress, had arrived in one of the devastated districts of France near the river Aisne, bringing with her a group of American Camp Fire girls to help with the restoration work and also to originate the first Camp Fire organization among young French girls. Accompanying them was Miss Patricia Lord, an American spinster of great wealth.[1]
At the end of her speech, the Camp Fire guardian, arising from her chair, stood up a little shakily, resting her arm upon that of her niece, Peggy Webster.
The young girl was like and at the same time unlike her, as she was the daughter of Mrs. Burton’s twin sister.
At the present time Peggy was about eighteen years old, with vivid dark coloring, a short, straight nose and a firmly modeled chin.
There was a suggestion of splendid physical vitality in contrast with the older woman’s frailty. Yet the woman and girl had the same look of a determined will hidden beneath natural sweetness and gaiety.
“Perhaps it may be as well for you not to recover too promptly, Tante. We may all be driven from this area of France as soon as you are strong enough to travel. I believe there is no reason for immediate anxiety, yet recently the news from the front is not encouraging. I believe the French authorities are beginning to feel it may be as well to send the women and children back from the Marne and Aisne a second time to some place of greater security. But I agree with you, the idea seems impossible. To think of the Germans again overrunning the dear little French villages which have so recently been restored is a nightmare. Personally I won’t even consider it. Suppose the Germans are enjoying another temporary success, they will be thrust back eventually.”
As if anxious fully to absorb the beauty and tranquility of the scene about them, until they were really convinced that there was no further danger threatening the Allied lines in France, the Camp Fire guardian and the group of girls surrounding her remained silent a moment, after Peggy’s speech.
Nevertheless, each one of them concealed a nervousness, impossible under the circumstances to confess.