good as a companion. You girls are ever so much happier without me, I feel sure, or I wouldn't desert you."

"Desert us?" Barbara stiffened at once, forgetting the other subject of their conversation.

"You don't mean, Eugenia Peabody, that you have decided to give up the Red Cross work and go back home? You, of all of us! I simply won't believe it.[Pg 55] Why, I thought you were the most devoted, the most——"

[Pg 55]

Eugenia laughed half-heartedly. "I didn't say I was going home, Barbara," she protested. "But you are right in thinking I mean to give up my Red Cross work, at least if I am allowed to resign. I don't know why, but recently I don't seem to feel the same fondness for nursing. I kind of dread a great many things about it."

Barbara laid her hand caressingly upon Eugenia's knee.

Really Eugenia was growing so surprisingly human these days that one could scarcely recall the old Eugenia.

"Oh, that is just because you are tired. I know you have always denied this, but you have never been exactly the same since your siege with Captain Castaigne. The responsibility and the work were too much for you. I don't think he was ever half grateful enough! The idea of his joining his regiment without coming to say good-by to you—just writing a letter! Promise me you will go quietly away somewhere[Pg 56] and rest for a few weeks, Eugenia. Then I know you'll feel like getting back into harness again. Really, I need you to be with us. I haven't any backbone unless you are around to make me afraid of you."

[Pg 56]

Eugenia shook her head. "Perhaps I shall not be very far away and we may be able to see each other now and then. I have been thinking of a scheme for several days, almost ever since we came into Belgium. You remember I told you I had a good deal of money, but did not always know just how to spend it. Well, I have found a way here. I am going to get a big house and I am going to fill it full to overflowing with the Belgian babies and all the children who need an old maid mother to look after them. And I think I found the very house I need today. It is an old place that is supposed to be haunted and is far away from everything else. But it is big and has an old veranda. Perhaps I'll still be doing Red Cross work if I take care of well babies as well as sick ones. Do you think I'll make a great failure as a mother, Bab?" she ended.

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