Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/53

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A RED CROSS NURSE
43

fliers; but then she knew his failings did not lie in the field of boasting, and so she had to picture those incidents for herself.

Jack was more inclined to go into details when Jeanne came into the story.

"Here's the paper that was in the gold locket, Nellie," he told her. "Read it for yourself. You can get the meaning of the French a heap better than I ever could. It'll make the tears come in your eyes though, when you picture that poor woman dying there, one child carried off by that villain of a relative, and the other about to be cast adrift on a world at war."

"How dreadful it all is. Jack!" said the nurse, after she had finished reading the crumpled bit of paper that held such a tragic story. "Now tell me why you have brought little Jeanne to me?"

"Because, Nellie," said Jack, "Tom and I knew we could depend on your warm heart to manage somehow or other. She's got to have shoes and clothes, and then be placed in the charge of some decent person until Tom and I can come and claim her, after we chase these Boches back over the Rhine, and the war is over. Bessie and her mother have left Paris for a while and are in Nice, too far away for me to send Jeanne to them. We—Tom and I—did not know another girl or woman to turn to, so I have come to you."

Nellie bent her head in deep thought, while