The V. A. D. with her mind intent upon her wheel could only contribute, as her share in the conversation, descriptive and somewhat desultory comments upon points of interest along the way. Barry, because it harmonised with his mood, talked about his father and all their years together but ever without obtrusion of his grief. The experiences of the past three days, which they had shared, seemed to have established between them a sense of mutual confidence and comradeship such as in ordinary circumstances would have demanded years of companionship to effect. This sense of sympathy and of perfect understanding on the part of the girl at his side, together with the fascinating charm of her beauty, and her sweetness, was to Barry's stricken heart like a healing balm to an aching wound.
They were in sight of Etaples before Barry imagined they could have made more than half the journey.
“Etaples, so soon! It cannot be!”
“But it is,” said the girl, throwing a bright smile at him, “and that's the hospital, on the hill yonder, where the flag is flying.”
“Why,” exclaimed Barry, “that's the American flag! What's the American flag doing there?”
“It's flying over an American hospital,” said the V. A. D. “I think it's such a beautiful flag. In the breeze, it seems to me the most beautiful of all the flags. The stripes seem to flow out from the stars. Of course,” she added hurriedly, “the Union Jack with all its historic meaning and its mingled crosses, is splendidly glorious and is more decorative, but I always think, when I see those floating stripes, that the Americans have the most beautiful flag.”
“I admit,” said Barry, “it's a beautiful flag, but—well, I'm a Britisher, I suppose, and see it with British eyes. But why is that flag flying here in France? How do the authorities allow that? It's a neutral flag—awfully neutral, too.”
“I understand they have permission from the French authorities to fly that flag over every American institution in France. And you know,” continued the girl with rising enthusiasm, “if they are neutral, they have immensely helped us, too, haven't they?—in munitions and that sort of thing.”
“That's true enough,” agreed Barry, “and it's all the more wonderful when you think of the millions of Germans that they have in their country. I heard a very fine thing, not long ago, from a friend of mine. A Pittsburgh oil man about to close a deal, with a traveller, with millions in it, suddenly discovered that his oil was to go to the Germans. At once the deal was off, and, though the price was considerably raised, there was, in his own words, 'Nothing 'doing!' 'No stuff of mine,' he said, 'shall go to help an enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race.' That's the way I believe the real Americans feel.”
“This is a wonderful hospital,” said the V. A. D. “Whenever I see it, I somehow feel my heart grow warm to the American people for the splendid way in which they have helped poor France, for, you know, in the first months of the war, the French hospitals were perfectly ghastly.”