And Miss Patricia waved her hand toward the burying ground.
“Here I should like on this very hill top to build a home for the children of the soldiers who have died in France, a home where they may live, play and work together, speaking the same languages, thinking the same thoughts. We are struggling for a better understanding, a deeper unity between the allied nations. It can come best through the children whose fathers have died for the same cause. After we grow old I fear many of us learn nothing and forget nothing. And I should like to inscribe above the door of the home I shall build ‘Glorious France, the Battleground of Liberty.’”
Then a little abashed of her outburst and scarcely conscious of the importance of her suggestion, Miss Lord turned and went her way apart from the others. She was not to know at that time how her idea spoken with such impulsiveness and with her usual generosity was later to bear richer fruit than she then dreamed.
However, neither Mrs. Burton, the two French officers, nor Bettina and Yvonne failed to realize the significance of her utterance.
CHAPTER XIV
Foundation Stones
Some days later a number of guests were entertained informally by Miss Lord at her house in Versailles. The trip into the French country had been depressing and if Miss Patricia’s ideas for future work in France were still a little far distant, this was not true with the plans of the Camp Fire girls.
For weeks they had been meeting other groups of girls in the city of Paris and interesting them in their program for establishing a French Camp Fire organization. They had written to the central organization in the United States asking them to get in touch with the French for a mutual exchange of ideas. Moreover, Mrs. Burton had also persuaded a woman of unusual charm and high position to take over the work of the French Camp Fire and become its first guardian.
But the group of girls who were invited by Miss Lord to her home at Versailles were the original group of poor French girls who were Marguerite Arnot’s friends.
Miss Patricia also suggested to Yvonne Fleury that she include her acquaintances in the same invitation.
“As a matter of fact, Yvonne,” she insisted, “if democracy is to be the order of the day, I don’t see why we should not try to practice it among the groups of Camp Fire girls. I’ve an idea poor girls may be more in need of just the help the Camp Fire can give than the rich. Also I would like to see a little more democracy practiced in our own household at the present time. You girls and Polly Burton must remember that I was once as poor a girl as one could find in the county of Cork and that is saying a good deal. No one need think I forget it! Now I have no mind to be spoiling any of you by our own fine living for the next few months. This is merely my way of celebrating the dawn of peace and perhaps of rewarding you girls for the sacrifices you made during the war. But if your friends, Yvonne, think they are too fine to meet Marguerite Arnot’s friends and to be members of the same Camp Fire group, then in faith I shall have nothing to do with them and never want them in my house! Of course you may do as you like, Yvonne. Don’t ask them to come here if you think they will object to meeting Marguerite, her friends or me. Neither be a telling of them that Polly Burton is a famous actress and so making them wish to come for that reason. A famous actress Polly may be, but she is often an obstinate and mistaken woman.”