"Oh, can nothing be done for him?" gasped Belinda.
The ambulance driver came quickly to attention, blushing like the great boy he was. "Beg pardon, Miss. You look French, you know."
The injured aviator was laughing immoderately, if weakly. "What d'you think of this Johnny, Floss? Callin' you a French girl. Ah!" he added in quite another tone, "they were a long while gettin' these legs of mine off—don't you think? They held a sheet up between me and my legs when they first tried to do it: but I knew when they cut into me—the butchers! The blood spurted up and spread all over the sheet, so it did!"
"Local anesthetic," whispered the ambulance driver to the white-faced nurse. "Couldn't etherize him. And it's all for nothing, I fancy. Might as well have let the poor chap be buried whole as in pieces."
The locomotive whistled a warning. There was really nothing she could do for the sufferer. Belinda fled back to the train and it moved on. She had glimpsed a little of what her work was to be—and the poilus in her compartment respected her tears.
But they tried to cheer her up immediately. If a woman's tears appeal to men of all nations and in all walks in life, they particularly appeal to a Frenchman. A big, bewhiskered lieutenant sat down beside her and talked to her as though she were a child he was comforting.
"Non! Non! Do not take on so, Mademoiselle. Let the tears be for us chaps who are hit. Then we weep—not our nurses. We must look to you for cheerfulness—for courage. Mon Dieu! this fighting would be a hard task indeed were it not for you of the Croix Rouge."
Another man had picked a bunch of wild flowers while the train was halted (who but a Frenchman could have made so artistic a bouquet of the poor little blossoms?) and he presented them to Belinda with a polite speech. An apple-cheeked boy slipped into the seat beside her after her bewhiskered comforter was gone and blushingly showed her the photograph of the girl he had just been home to marry. Naturally the nurse had to be interested in that romance.
And so, soon, the train stopped again and there was a cow-shed in sight where clean, mild-eyed cows were standing to be milked. Belinda ventured forth again to beg a cup of the fresh milk. The women milking would not let her pay for it, and when they learned she had come from America they showered her with blessings.
"These good people seem so grateful for the little America is doing for their country," she later wrote in her diary.