At the Grand Central Terminal Ruth was met by a very lovely lady, a worker in the Red Cross, who took her home to her Madison Avenue residence, where Ruth was to remain for the few days she was to be in the city.
"It is all I can do," said the woman smiling, when Ruth expressed her wonder that she should have turned her beautiful home into a clearing house for Red Cross workers. "It is all I can do. I am quite alone now, and it cheers me and gives me new topics of interest to see and care for the splendid girls who are really going over there to help our soldiers."
Later Ruth Fielding learned that this woman's two sons were both in France--one in a medical corps and the other in the trenches. She had already given her all, it seemed; but she could not do too much for the country.
The several girls the lady entertained at this time had little opportunity for amusement. The Red Cross ship was to sail within forty-eight hours.
Ruth was able to meet many of the members of her supply unit, and found them a most interesting group. They had come from many parts of the country and had brought with them varied ideas about the work and of what they were "going up against."
All, however, seemed to be deeply interested in the Red Cross and the burden the war had laid upon them. They were not going to France to play, but to serve in any way possible.
There was a single disturbing element in the bustling hurry of getting under way. At this late moment the woman who had been chosen as chief of the supply unit was deterred from sailing. Serious illness in her family forced her to resign her position and remain to nurse those at home. It was quite a blow to the unit and to the Commissioner himself.
The question, Who will take her place? became the most important thought in the minds of the members of the unit. Ruth fully understood that to find a person as capable as the woman already selected would not be an easy matter.
Until the hour the party left New York for Philadelphia, the port of sail for the Red Cross ship, no candidate had been settled on by the Commissioner to head the supply unit.
"We shall find somebody. I have one person in mind right now who may be the very one. If so, this person will be shipped by a faster vessel and by another convoy than yours," and he laughed. "You may find your chief in Paris when you get there."