Ruth Fielding at the War Front | Page 2

aeroplane she heard. Debouching into sight from the fringing thickets came a powerful motor car, its forefront armored. She could barely see the head and shoulders of the man behind the steering wheel.
Down the hill plunged the car, and the girl quickly stepped to the side of the lane and waited for it to pass. The roar of its muffler was deafening. In a moment she saw that the tonneau of the gray car was filled with uniformed men.
They were officers in khaki, the insignia of their several grades scarcely distinguishable against the dull color of their clothing. How different from the gay uniforms of the French Army Corps, which, until of late, the girl of the Red Cross had been used to seeing in this locality.
Their faces were different, too. Gray, lean, hard-bitten faces, their eyebrows so light and sparse that it seemed their eyes were hard stones which never seemed to shift their straight-ahead gaze. Yet each man in the tonneau and the orderly beside the driver on the front seat saluted the Red Cross girl as she stood by the laneside.
In another half-minute the car had turned at the bottom of the hill and was out of sight.
She sighed again as she plodded on. Now, indeed, was the spring gone from her limbs and her expression was weary with a sadness that, although not personal, was heavy upon her.
Her thought was with the aeroplane and the motor car and with the thundering guns at the battle front, not many miles away. Yet she hastened her steps up this grassy lane toward the chateau, in quite the opposite direction.
The sudden stir of the military life of this sector portended something unusual. An advance of the enemy or an attempt to make a drive upon the Allies' works. In any case, down in the little, low-lying town behind her, there might be increased need of hospital workers. She must, before long, be once more at the hospital to meet the first ambulances rolling in from the field hospitals or from the dressing stations at the very front.
She reached the summit of the ridge, over which the lane passed to the valley on the west side of the hill. The high arch of the gateway of the chateau was in sight.
Coming from that direction, walking easily, yet quickly, was the lean military figure of a young man who switched the roadside weed stalks with a light cane. He looked up quickly as the girl approached, and his rather somber face lighted as though the sight of her gave him pleasure.
Yet his gaze was respectful. He was handsome, keenly intelligent looking and not typically French, although he was dressed in the uniform of a branch of the French service, wearing a major's chevrons. As the Red Cross girl came nearer, he put his heels together smartly, removed his kepi, and bowed stiffly from the waist. It was not a Frenchman's bow.
The girl responded with a quiet bend of her head, but she passed him by without giving him any chance to speak. He followed her only with his eyes--and that but for a moment; then he went on down the lane, his stride growing momentarily longer until he passed from view.
A cry from the direction of the broad gateway ahead next aroused the attention of the girl in the Red Cross uniform. She looked up to see another girl running to meet her.
This was a short, rather plump French girl, whose eyes shone with excitement, and who ran with hands outstretched to meet those of the Red Cross girl. The latter was some years the older.
"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth! Mademoiselle Ruth Fielding!" cried the French girl eagerly. "Did you meet him? Ah-h!"
Ruth Fielding laughed as she watched the mobile face of her friend. The latter's cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes rolled. She was all aquiver with the emotion that possessed her.
"Did you see him?" she repeated, as their hands met and Ruth stooped to press her lips to the full ones of her friend.
"Did I see whom, you funny Henriette?" asked Ruth.
"Am I fon-nay?" demanded Henriette Dupay, in an English which she evidently struggled to make clear. "Then am I not nice?"
"You are both funny and nice," declared Ruth Fielding, hugging the girl's plump body close to her own, as they walked on slowly to the chateau gate. "Tell me. Who was I supposed to see? A motor full of officers passed me, and an aeroplane over my head----"
"Oh, non! non!" cried Henriette. Then, in awe: "Major Marchand."
"Oh! Is that Major Marchand?"
"But yes, Mademoiselle Ruth. Ah-h! Such a man--such a figure! He is Madame the Countess' younger son."
"So I understand," Ruth said. "He is safely engaged in Paris, is he not?" and her tone implied much.
"Ye-es. So it is said.