Gradually the roar of the cannon had retreated. The Yankees were forcing the fighting on this front and had pressed the Germans back, slowly but surely. The last and greatest German offensive had broken down, and now Marshal Foch had started his great drive which was to shatter utterly the foe’s western front.
By some foul chance the German bombing plane had escaped the watchful French and American airplanes at the front, had crossed the fighting lines, and had reached Clair with its single building of mark – the hospital. The Hun raider deliberately dropped his cargo of explosives on and around this building of mercy.
In broad daylight the red crosses painted upon the roofs of the several departments of the institution were too plainly seen from the air for the Hun to have made a mistake. It was a deliberate expression of German “frightfulness.”
But the bomb, which in exploding had crushed inward the window of Ruth Fielding’s little sleeping cell, was the final one dropped from the enemy plane. The machine droned away, pursued by the two or three airplanes that had spiraled up to attack it.
Enough damage had been done, however. As Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone scrambled up from the floor of the corridor outside Ruth’s door their united screams brought the little Madame la Directrice of the hospital to their aid.
“She is killed!” gasped Jennie, gazing in horror at their fallen comrade and friend.
“Murdered!” shrieked Helen, and covered her face with her hands.
The Frenchwoman swept them both aside and entered the chamber. She was not more practical than the two American girls, but her experience of four years of war had made her used to such sights as this. She knelt beside the fallen girl, discovered that the wound upon her shoulder was not deep, and instantly heaved the heavy stone off the girl’s back.
“La, la, la!” she murmured. “It is sad! That so-heavy stone! Ah, the bone must be broken! Poor child!”
“Isn’t she dead?” gasped Helen. “No, no! She is very bad wounded-perhaps. See – let us turn her over – ”
She spoke in English. It was Jennie who came to her aid. Between them they turned Ruth Fielding over. Plainly she was not dead. She breathed lightly and she was unconscious.
“Oh, Ruthie! Ruthie!” begged Helen. “Speak to me!”
“No!” exclaimed the matron. “Do not attempt to rouse her, Mademoiselle. It is better that the shoulder should be set and properly bandaged before she comes to consciousness again. Push that button yonder for the orderly – twice! That is it. We will lay her on her cot – poor child!”
The woman was strong as well as tender. With Jennie’s aid she lifted the wounded girl and placed her on her narrow bed. A man came running along the corridor. The matron instructed him in such rapid French that neither of Ruth’s friends could understand all that she said. The orderly departed on the run.
“To the operating room!” commanded the matron, when the brancardiers appeared with the stretcher.
They lifted Ruth, who remained unconscious, from the bed to the stretcher. They descended with her to the ground floor, Jennie and Helen following in the wake. On both of the main floors of the hospital nurses came to the doors of the wards to learn what had happened. Although the whole hospital had been shaken by the bombs, there had been no casualty within its precincts save this.
“Why should it have to be Ruth?” groaned Helen. “To think of our Ruthie being wounded – the only one!”
They shut the two American girls out of the operating room, of course. The Médecin Chef himself came hurriedly to see what was needed for the injured girl. Mademoiselle Americaine, as Ruth was called about the hospital by the grateful French people, was very popular and much beloved.
Her two girl friends waited in great anxiety outside the operating room. At last Madame la Directrice came out. She smiled at the anxious girls. That was the most glorious smile – so Jennie Stone said afterward – that was ever beheld.
“A fracture of the shoulder bone; her sweet flesh cut and bruised, but not deeply, Mesdemoiselles. No scar will be left, the surgeon assures me. And when she recovers from the anesthetic – Oh, la, la! she will have nothing to do but get well. It means a long furlough, however, for Mademoiselle Americaine.”
It was two hours later that Helen and Jennie sat, one on either side of Ruth’s couch, in the private room that had been given to the wounded Red Cross worker. Ruth’s eyes opened heavily, she blinked at the light, and then her vision swept first Helen and then Jennie.
“Oh, such a dream!” she murmured. “I dreamed about coming to Cheslow and the Red Mill again, when I was a little girl. And I dreamed all about Briarwood, and our trips about the country, and our adventures in school and out. I dreamed even of coming here to France, and all that has happened. Such a dream!
“Mercy’s sake, girls! What has happened to me? I’m all bandaged up like a grand blessé!”
CHAPTER III – IT’S ALL OVER!
The shoulder had to be put in a cast; but the healing of the cuts and bruises on Ruth Fielding’s back was a small matter. Only —
“It’s all over for me, girls,” she groaned, as her two friends commiserated with her. “The war might just as well end to-morrow, as far as I am concerned. I can help no longer.”
For Major Soutre, the head surgeon, had said:
“After the plaster comes off it will be then eight weeks, Mademoiselle, before it will be safe for you to use your arm and shoulder in any way whatsoever.”
“So my work is finished,” she repeated, wagging a doleful head upon her pillow.
“Poor dear!” sighed Jennie. “Don’t you want me to make you something nice to eat?”
“Mercy on us, Heavy!” expostulated Helen, “just because you work in a diet kitchen, don’t think that the only thing people want when they are sick is something to eat.” “It’s the principal thing,” declared the plump girl stubbornly. “And Colonel Marchand says I make heavenly broth!”
Helen sniffed disdainfully.
Ruth laughed weakly; but she only said:
“Tom says the war will be over by Christmas. I don’t know whether it is he or General Pershing that has planned out the finish of the Germans. However, if it is over by the holidays, I shall be unable to do anything more for the Red Cross. They will send me home. I have done my little, girls.”
“‘Little!” exclaimed Helen. “You have done much more than Jennie and I, I am sure. We have done little or nothing compared with your services, Ruthie.”
“Hold on! Hold on!” exclaimed Jennie Stone gruffly, pulling a paper out of her handbag. “Wait just a minute, young lady. I will not take a back seat for anybody when it comes to statistics of work. Just listen here. These are some of the things I have done since I joined up with that diet kitchen outfit. I have tasted soup and broth thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and three times. I have tasted ten thousand, one hundred and eleven separate custards. I have tasted twenty thousand ragouts – many of them of rabbit, and I am always suspicious that the rabbit may have had a long tail – ugh! Baked cabbage and cheese, nine thousand, seven hundred and six – ”
“Jennie! Do stop! How could you eat so much?” demanded Helen in horror.
“Bless you! the poilus did the eating; I only did the seasoning and tasting. It’s that keeps me so fat, I do believe. And then, I have served one million cups of cocoa.”
“Why don’t you say a billion? You might as well.”
“Because I can’t count up to a billion. I never could,” declared the fleshy girl. “I