Captain Lucy in France
pricked forward and twinkling eyes behind his silky hair. Lucy smiled at it, wishing it were alive. With heavy heart she shrank from facing the new day, and desperately longed to fall back into dreamland. But, unlike the night before, she felt strength enough within her to summon up her courage and make a prompt and vigorous effort.

“Come on, Lucy Gordon, buck up! You can’t give in. Have they brought you this near the battle line to be a coward, or are you going to help your father and,” scornfully, “they used to call you Captain Lucy?”

Like Alice in Wonderland, she was fond of scolding herself, and could do it as effectively as any one else could have done it for her. Close on top of the scolding she got up and in her anxious eagerness to be dressed and to see her father she forgot to pity herself further, and thought more than anything else that this day might bring her mother to her before it ended. “But if only those guns would stop one minute!” she faltered, as she paused in her dressing to cover her ears, half deafened by the double bombardment.

Out of the bag so hurriedly packed at Highland House she selected a blue gingham dress, for the day was warm and sunny. She gave a hasty glance at her hair-ribbons in the little mirror she had brought with her, and, after putting the bare room in order, went out in search of the stairway. It was close at hand, beyond the adjoining bedroom, the foot of it opening directly on the street. Lucy ran down it, the sound of voices coming to her from outside above the cannons’ noise.

The street was crowded with French soldiers, together with a scattering of Americans, who looked very much a part of things as they passed by, joined in friendly groups with the poilus. One and all were hot, dusty and loaded down with field equipment, for there were few permissions just now, and these men had been sent back for but a few hours’ respite from the fighting-line. Lucy’s eager, shining eyes followed each American soldier as he passed, all else forgotten but those dear familiar figures, until two women, coming by with baskets on their arms, stopping to smile and point in her direction, recalled her to herself. She returned their smiles as cheerfully as she could, wondering much at the patient endurance which had left their thin faces neither frightened nor despairing. A dozen women passed her as she stood on the threshold breathing the soft spring air, and several children too. All were hurrying, intent upon their errands, but they looked quiet and self-possessed, not seeming even to hear the never ceasing explosions which forced them 
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