Part 20 (2/2)
How would Helen and their father feel if Tom was seriously wounded? If Ruth found him here in the hospital, should she immediately communicate with his twin sister in Paris, and with his father, who had doubtless reached the States by this time?
Her mind thus in a turmoil, she followed the nurse into the ward and down the aisle between the rows of cots. She had helped comfort the wounded in this very ward when she worked in this hospital; but she looked now for no familiar face, save one. She looked ahead for the white, strained countenance of Tom Cameron against the coa.r.s.e pillow-slip.
The nurse stopped beside a cot. Oh, the relief! There was no screen around it! The occupant was turned with his face away from the aisle.
The stump of the uplifted arm on his left side, bandaged and padded, was uppermost.
”Tom!” breathed the girl of the Red Mill, holding back just a little and with a hand upon her breast.
It was a head of black hair upon the pillow. It might easily have been Tom Cameron. And in a moment Ruth was sure that he was an American from the very contour of his visage-but it was _not_ Tom!
”Oh! It's not! It's not!” she kept saying over and over to herself. And then she suddenly found herself sitting in a chair at the end of the ward and the nurse was saying to her:
”Are you about to faint, Mademoiselle? It is the friend you look for?”
”Oh, no! I sha'n't faint,” Ruth declared, getting a grip upon her nerves again. ”It is not my friend. Oh! I cannot tell you how relieved I am.”
”Ah, yes! I know,” sighed the Frenchwoman. ”I have a father and a brother in our army and after every battle I fear until I hear from them. I am glad for your sake it is another than your friend. And yet-_he_ will have friends who suffer, too-is it not?”
CHAPTER XXI-AGAIN THE WERWOLF
Ruth Fielding felt as though she needed a cup of tea more than she ever had before in her life. And Clare Biggars had her own tea service in her room at the pension. Ruth had inquired for Clare and learned that this was a free hour for the Kansas girl. So Ruth and Henriette Dupay drove to the boarding-house; for to get a good cup of tea in one of the restaurants or cafes was impossible.
Her relief at learning the wounded American in the hospital was not Tom Cameron was quite overwhelming at first. Ruth had come out to the car so white of face that the French girl was frightened.
”Oh! Mam'zelle Fielding! It is that you haf los' your friend?” cried the girl in the stammering English she tried so hard to make perfect.
”I don't know that,” sighed Ruth. ”But, at least, if he is wounded, he was not brought here to this hospital.”
She could not understand how that letter had been found in the pocket of the young man she had seen in the hospital ward. Tom Cameron certainly had written that letter. Ruth would not be free from worry until she had heard again from Tom, or of him.
The pension was not far away, and Ruth made her friend lock the car and come in with her, for Clare was a hospitable soul and it was lunch time.
To her surprise Ruth found Clare in tears.
”What is the matter, my dear girl?” cried Ruth, as Clare fled sobbing to her arms the moment she saw the girl of the Red Mill. ”What can have happened to you?”
”Everything!” exploded the Kansas girl. ”You can't imagine! I've all but been arrested, and the Head called me down dreadfully, and Madame--”
”Madame Mantel?” Ruth asked sharply. ”Is she the cause of your troubles?
I should have warned you--”
”Oh, the poor dear!” groaned Clare. ”She feels as bad about it as I do.
Why, they took her to the police station, too!”
”You seem to have all been having a fine time,” Ruth said, rather tartly. ”Tell me all about it. But ask us to sit down, and _do_ give us a cup of tea. This is Henriette Dupay, Clare, and a very nice girl she is. Try to be cordial-hold up the reputation of America, my dear.”
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