Yet the wedding had taken place in the previous spring at the little French “Farmhouse with the Blue Front Door,” where the four girls had spent the most cheerful months since their arrival in Europe for the war nursing.
Only once had Nona and Mildred deserted their posts in Belgium, where they had continued Eugenia’s work of caring for the homeless Belgian children. Then they had gone to attend her wedding, but had returned to Belgium as soon as possible.
But Eugenia and Captain Castaigne had taken scarcely more time for their own honeymoon.
Soon after the ceremony Captain Castaigne had gone to rejoin his regiment and three days after Eugenia had become a member of the staff of a French hospital near her husband’s line of trenches.
So it turned out that Barbara Meade was left at the Chateau d’Amélie, as Madame Castaigne’s friend and companion. Dick Thornton boarded in the village near by, so that he and Barbara had a number of happy months together.
But Dick had finally decided that he must return to America and had urged Barbara and his sister Mildred to return with him. Of course, Nona had been invited to accompany them, but no special pressure had been brought upon her.
However, Mildred did not feel that her Red Cross work in Europe was finished, while Barbara refused to desert her friends.
But Barbara had another reason for her decision: she desired Dick to be alone when he confessed their engagement to his mother and father. Barbara had little fear of Judge Thornton’s disapproval, but felt reasonably convinced that Mrs. Thornton would be both disappointed and aggrieved. Certainly she had never hesitated to announce that she expected her son Dick to make a brilliant match. How could she then be satisfied with a western girl of no wealth or distinction?
It happened that Dick Thornton also had a private reason for finally agreeing to Barbara’s wish. His experiences in the past two years had given him a new point of view toward life. No longer was he willing to be known only as his father’s son and to continue being supported by him. Before Dick married he intended making a position for himself, so as to be able to take care of his own wife.
Nona also recalled that she was really responsible for their coming into Russia. It had seemed to her that they must make their Red Cross work complete by nursing in the largest of the Allied countries.