Barbara stood for a moment with her eyelids fluttering and a curiously intense expression on her face. Then she reached out her hand and touched Mildred Thornton, who chanced at the instant to be nearest her.
“I can’t understand,” she whispered. Then without finishing her sentence she wrinkled up her small nose in an absurd fashion, sniffing the heavy underground air.
“I suppose our trip has gone to my head,” she murmured, “but do you know I thought I just smelt a delicious odor of flowers. Do you suppose it is because the air here is different?”
Eugenia also sniffed. “Flowers!” she repeated indignantly, overhearing the remark. “Really, Barbara, I don’t see how you can manage to be foolish so many times.” Nevertheless, she slipped her arm inside the younger girl’s, noticing that she looked pale and tired.
At this time the officer who had been acting as their escort moved on ahead with Nona and Mildred following him.
A second later and Eugenia also stopped, arching her thin nostrils.
For there standing just in front of Barbara was an unexpected figure. He was a boy of about nineteen. But instead of having the dark hair and eyes of most young Frenchmen, he was blond, with pale gold hair, blue eyes and the faintest down of a future moustache. Moreover, he held a bunch of old-fashioned flowers in his hand, which he was thrusting toward the two strange young women.
“There, I did know what I was talking about, after all!” Barbara ejaculated faintly to her companion. However, Eugenia had a habit of paying no attention to one when she chanced to be in the wrong.
“Thank you,” she remarked graciously to the young soldier as she accepted his flowers, for Eugenia could be gracious when she chose. “But do tell how you managed to find a bouquet at such a time and place?”
She was speaking her best school French, but in spite of her peculiar accent the soldier somehow managed to understand.