Naturally curiosity forced her to turn around and so for the instant she forgot herself and her surroundings.
She saw a young man in a khaki uniform of a kind of olive green with a close-fitting cap and visor. But beneath the cap was a face which was like and yet unlike the face of the friend she remembered. This fellow’s expression was grave, almost sad, the dark-brown eyes were no longer indifferent and mocking, the upright figure no longer inactive. Indeed, there was action and courage and vigor in every line of the figure and face.
Barbara stepped back a few paces.
“Dick Thornton,” she demanded, “have I lost my mind or what has happened? Aren’t you several thousand miles away in New York City, or Newport, where ever the place was you intended spending the summer? I simply can’t believe my own eyes.”
Dick slipped his arm inside Barbara Meade’s. For the time no one was noticing them; the scene about them was absorbing every attention.
“Just a moment, please, Barbara, I want to explain the situation to you,” Dick asked, and drew the girl away behind the shelter of one of the hospital wagons.
“Sit down for a moment,” he urged. “Dear me, Barbara, what have they been doing to you in the few weeks since we said good-by in good old New York? You are as white and tiny as a little tired ghost.”
But Barbara shook her head persuasively. “Please don’t talk about me,” she pleaded. “I must know what has occurred. What could have induced you to come over here where this terrible war is taking place, and what are you doing now you are here? You aren’t a soldier, are you?” And there was little in Barbara’s expression to suggest that she wished her friend to answer “Yes.”
Dick had also taken a seat on the ground alongside Barbara and now quite simply he reached over and took her hand inside his in a friendly strong grasp.
“I don’t know which question to answer first, but I’ll try and not make a long story. I want you to know and then I want you to tell Mill. I came over to this part of the country so as to be near you. But I haven’t wanted to see either of you until I found out whether I was going to amount to anything. If I wasn’t of use I was going on back home without making a fuss. You see, Barbara, I suppose your visit to us set me thinking. You had a kind way of suggesting, perhaps without meaning it, that I was a pretty idle, good-for-nothing fellow, not worth my salt, let alone the amount of sugar my father was bestowing on me. Well, I pretended not to mind. Certainly I didn’t want a little thing like you to find out you had made an impression on me. Still, things you said rankled. Then you and old Mill went away. I couldn’t get either of you out of my mind. It seemed pretty rotten, me staying at home dancing the fox trot and you and Mill over here up against the Lord knows what. So I—I just cleared out and came along too. But there, I didn’t mean to talk so much. Whatever is the matter with you, Barbara? You look like you were going to keel over again, just as you did when you tumbled out of that car.”