“How?”
“Find Jeanne for Doggie.”
Peggy bent forward with a queer light in her eyes.
“Does she love him—really love him as he deserves to be loved?”
“It is not often, Mrs. Manningtree, that I commit myself to a definite statement. But, to my certain knowledge, these two are breaking their hearts for each other. Couldn’t you find her, before the poor laddie is killed?”
“He’s not killed yet, thank God!” said Peggy, with an odd thrill in her voice.
He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would be coming home soon, carried, according to convoy, to any unfriendly hospital dumping-ground in the United Kingdom. If only she could bring this French girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for the past, to act according to the new knowledge that love and sorrow had brought her.
“But how can I find her—just a girl—an unknown Mademoiselle Bossière—among the millions of Paris?”
“I’ve been racking my brains all the morning,” replied Phineas, “to recall the address, and out of the darkness there emerges just two words, Port Royal. If you know Paris, does that help you at all?”
“I don’t know Paris,” replied Peggy humbly. “I don’t know anything. I’m utterly ignorant.”