yet his face lacked strength. Personally she[30] preferred the bronzed and rugged type of young men to whom she was accustomed in the west.

[30]

But what was it that her companion had been saying?

“I do trust, Miss Meade, that you are not ill from fright. Mildred, will you please lend us mother’s smelling salts for a little while, or had we best stop by a drug store?”

Shaking her head Barbara smiled. She was wearing the same little close-fitting brown velvet hat of the night of her arrival. But today her short curls had fluttered out from under it and her eyes were wide open and bluer than ever with the wonderful vision of the first great city she had ever seen.

“Oh, dear me, no, there is nothing in the world the matter with me,” Barbara expostulated. “Why if I can’t go through a little bit of excitement like that, how do you suppose I am going to manage to be a Red Cross nurse in Europe in war times?”

“You a war nurse?” Dick Thornton’s voice expressed surprise, amusement, and[31] disbelief. He turned his head sideways to glance at his companion. “Forgive me,” he said, “but you look a good deal more like a bisque doll. I believe they do have dolls dressed as Red Cross nurses, set up in the windows of the toy shops. Shall I try to get a place in a window for you?”

[31]

Barbara was blushing furiously, although she intended not to allow herself to grow angry. Certainly she must not continue so sensitive about her youthful appearance. There would be many more trials of this same kind ahead of her.

“I am sorry you think I look like a doll,” she returned with an effort at carelessness; “it is rather absurd in a grown-up woman to show so little character. My hair is short because I had typhoid fever a year ago. You know, I’m really over eighteen; I got through school pretty early and as I have always known what I wanted to do, I took some special courses in nursing at school, so I was able to graduate two years afterwards.”

“Oh, I see,” Dick murmured, appearing[32] thoughtful. “Eighteen is older than any doll I ever heard of unless she happened to be a doll that had been put away in an old cedar chest years ago. Then she usually had the paint licked off, the saw-dust coming out and her hair uncurled.” Again Dick glanced around, grave as the proverbial judge. “You know, it does not look 

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