CHAPTER X
Chateau d’Amélie
“My dear Eugenia, you might as well confess that you are desperately interested. If you say anything else we won’t believe you,” Barbara declared positively.
Three days afterward, between four and five in the afternoon, the four American Red Cross girls were leaving the little French farmhouse together, and evidently with some definite intention. Nevertheless, the journey could have nothing to do with their nursing, since the faces and the costumes of three of the girls suggested a gala occasion. Eugenia, however, having entirely recovered her health and poise, had returned to her former manner and character. Yet she too was wearing her best dress, recently purchased in Paris, and was looking sternly handsome.
“Then I might as well not answer you at all, Barbara, since you have made up your mind already what I should reply,” she answered curtly. Without intending to be ungracious she stalked off in front of the little procession.
The other two girls laughed, but Barbara, making a little grimace, ran on until she was able to catch up with Eugenia. She was beginning to think now and then that the older girl’s manner was more severe than her emotions. Now she gave her arm a little shake.
“Don’t be so superior, Miss Peabody from Boston! You must make your confession along with the rest of us. So tell me the honest truth—‘hope I may-die-if-I-don’t’ kind—aren’t you terribly pleased that the Countess, whose guests we have been for some time, has condescended to be willing to meet us and has asked us to have coffee with her this afternoon at her chateau?”
Still Eugenia demurred. “Oh, I presume it will be a novel experience. Nevertheless, I don’t think we show proper pride in accepting an invitation before the Countess has called upon us. It isn’t the way we do such things at home. If it comes to a question of family, of course I am an American, but the Peabodys of Boston——”
Barbara’s laughter rang out deliciously. She was in the gayest possible humor and suggested a little woodland creature in her brown cloth suit and hat with a single scarlet wing. What had become of the serious-minded young American woman devoting her life to the care of the wounded?
“But it isn’t a question of family, Eugenia, or how should I dare live and breathe in the same world with you, any more than with a French countess?” she protested. “But please remember that we have accepted a great deal more from this same Countess than a simple invitation to spend an hour with her. We are living in her house, we have been eating a goodly portion of her food. Oh, I know this is because we are in France to nurse the soldiers she adores! Still, I can’t see that this cancels our obligations. Besides, she is a much older woman and——”
Eugenia put her one disengaged hand up to her ear.