Looking up into the clear sky, Nona spoke first.
“It is as though the war were a horrible nightmare, isn’t it?” she began, leaning her chin on her hand and gazing out over the country. “But do you know, Barbara, dreadful as you may think it of me, I am not content to stay on here in the shelter of the hospital, hard and sad as the work of caring for the wounded is. I feel I must know what the battlefield is like, smell the smoke, see the trenches. Often I think I can hear the booming of the great guns, see the wounded alone and needing help before help can come. I am going over there some day, though I don’t know just how or when I can manage it.”
The girl’s face was quiet and determined. She was not excited; it was as if she felt a more definite work calling her and wished to answer it.
Then Nona quieted down, and without replying Barbara lay resting her head in the older girl’s lap. There was a growing sympathy between them, although so unlike.
Barbara’s blue eyes were upturned toward the clear sky when suddenly her companion felt her body stiffen. For an instant she lay rigid, the next she pointed upward.
“Nona,” she exclaimed in a stifled voice, “it doesn’t seem possible, but—well, what is that in the sky over there? Perhaps we are not so far from the fighting as you believe.”
Nona followed the other girl’s gaze, but perhaps she was less far-sighted and her golden brown eyes had not the vision of her friend’s blue ones.
“Why, dear, I only see two small black clouds.” Then she laughed. “We are talking like Sister Anne and Bluebeard’s wife. Remember Sister Anne’s speech. ‘I can only behold a cloud of dust arising in the distance.’” And Nona made a screen of her hand, laughingly placing it over her eyes.
But Barbara jumped to her feet. “Don’t be a goose, Nona. Look, I am in earnest. Those are not clouds, they are aeroplanes and I believe they are trying to destroy each other.”
But there was no need now for Barbara to argue; the situation was explaining itself.