“Is there a chance for her to recover through an operation?” Miss Patricia next asked without a perceptible change either in her expression or manner.
This time, as Mrs. Bishop appeared unable to speak, Monsieur Duval answered instead.
“There is one in a hundred, but we dared not accept the responsibility without first coming to you.”
“Then telegraph at once for the best surgeon in Paris who can be spared and also for Captain Richard Burton. I will give you his address. In the meantime, if you can find hospitality elsewhere than at our farm I shall be grateful. We shall have but little opportunity to make visitors comfortable for the next few days.”
With this Miss Patricia withdrew.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIELD OF HONOR
Some little time afterwards, late on a March afternoon, the yard in front of the farm house on the Aisne, chosen by the Camp Fire girls for their temporary home in France, was occupied by a number of persons. They had separated into groups and were either walking about the place or else were seated in informal attitudes.
On the wooden steps leading directly down from the house two girls moved aside to allow a woman and a man to pass them.
The woman was Miss Patricia, who appeared taller and more painfully gaunt than ever, and moreover, was laying down the law upon some subject in her usual didatic fashion. Yet the man whose arm was slipped through hers was regarding her with devoted and amused affection. According to Captain Richard Burton and in the opinion of a number of other persons, Miss Patricia’s good sense and devotion in the past few weeks had saved his wife’s life.