CHAPTER IV With the American Army in France

“BUT, Gene, the hospital is so perfect in every detail! I don’t see how you have managed and it is so fine to be working here in France with you again. But best of all, you don’t seem to have changed and I was afraid——”

Nona ended her speech abruptly, not having intended making this final remark.

Three or four hours before she and Barbara Thornton and the two other Red Cross nurses had arrived at the new hospital, set aside for the care of the American soldiers of which Eugenia, Madame Henri Castaigne was in charge.

For the first two hours Eugenia had been too occupied to do more than greet her old friends and make the acquaintance of the new girls. But since dinner she had been showing the four of them over the hospital.

So far there were not a great many patients,[55] only a few of the soldiers with not very serious illnesses, so they were receiving the most devoted attention.

[55]

Then, after their survey of the hospital, Eugenia and Mildred Thornton with the four newcomers had gone up to their own rooms.

The nurses’ rooms were on the top floor of the building, which had once been a private country place, converted, largely under Eugenia’s direction, into a modern hospital.

Instead of occupying one long room like a hospital ward, it was one of Eugenia’s ideas that the Red Cross nurses required privacy and quiet after the long strain of their work. So the space had been divided into small apartments, two girls in each room. Nona and Eugenia were to have one, Barbara Thornton and Mildred Thornton, her sister-in-law, the one adjoining, while Mollie Drew and Agatha Burton were across the hall. The half dozen other nurses had the same arrangements.

At Nona’s last words, Eugenia Castaigne’s face had changed in expression slightly, but she made no reference to what[56] the words had implied. However, Nona remembered that Mildred Thornton had already written and had also told them, that Eugenia never discussed Captain Castaigne’s disappearance and no one knew what her real feeling was, or even if she believed her husband dead.

[56]

Just now and then in this world of ours and but very rarely, one may be a witness to what may well be called the 

 Prev. P 24/113 next