Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Part 2

"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 Medecin 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 a.s.sures 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 blesse!_"

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 princ.i.p.al 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 never was top-hole at mathematics. You know that."

They tried to cheer Ruth in her affliction; but the girl of the Red Mill was really much depressed. She had always been physically, as well as mentally, active. And at first she must remain in bed and pose as a regular invalid.

She was thus posing when Tom Cameron got a four-days' leave and came back as far as Clair, as he always did when he was free. It was so much nearer than Paris; and Helen could always run up here and meet him, where Ruth had been at work. The chums spent Tom's vacations from the front together as much as possible.

When Mr. Cameron, who had been in Europe with a Government commission, had returned to the United States, he had laughingly left Helen and Tom in Ruth's care.

"But he never would have entrusted you children to my care," sighed the girl of the Red Mill, "if he had supposed I would be so foolish as to get a broken shoulder."

"Quite," said Tom, nodding a wise head. "One might have supposed that if an aerial sh.e.l.l hit your shoulder the sh.e.l.l would be damaged, not the shoulder."

"It was the stone window-sill, they say," murmured Ruth contritely.

"Sure. Dad never supposed you were such a weak little thing. Heigh-ho!

We never know what's going to happen in this world. Oh, I say!" he suddenly added. "I know what's going to happen to me, girls."

"What is it, Captain Tom?" his sister asked, gazing at him proudly.

"They are not going to make you a colonel right away, are they, like Jennie's beau?"

"Not yet," admitted her brother, laughing. "I'm the youngest captain in our division right now. Some of 'em call me 'the infant,' as it is. But what is going to happen to me, I'm going up in the air!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Jennie Stone. "I should say that was a rise in the world."

"You are never going into aviation, Tom?" screamed Helen.

"Not exactly. But an old Harvard chum of mine, Ralph Stillinger, is going to take me up. You know Stillinger. Why, he's an ace!"

"And you are crazy!" exclaimed his sister, rather tartly. "Why do you want to risk your life so carelessly?"

Tom chuckled; and even Ruth laughed weakly. As though Tom had not risked his life a hundred times already on the battle front! If he were not exactly reckless, Tom Cameron possessed that brand of courage owned only by those who do not feel fear.

"I don't blame Tommy," said Jennie Stone. "I'd like to try 'aviating'

myself; only I suppose nothing smaller than a Zeppelin could take me up."

"Will you really fly, Tom?" Ruth asked.

"Ralph has promised me a regular circus-looping the loop, and spiraling, and all the tricks of flying."

"But you won't fly into battle?" questioned Helen anxiously. "Of course he won't take you over the German lines?"

"Probably not. They don't much fancy carrying amateurs into a fight. You see, only two men can ride in even those big fighting planes with the liberty motors; and both of them should be trained pilots, so that if anything happens to the man driving the machine, the other can jump in and take his place."