Still, women have been known to find their way into the Line. As some student of nature has told us, “It is hard to keep a squirrel off the ground.”
One summer morning an old acquaintance of ours, Miss Frances Lane, and her crony, or accomplice, Miss Helen Ryker, came off night duty at their hospital and sniffed the fresh air luxuriously. They had twelve hours of complete freedom from responsibility before them—a circumstance not in itself calculated to correct Miss Lane’s natural lightness of ballast.
In most hospitals nurses coming off night duty are not unreasonably expected to spend at least some portion of the following day in bed. But youthful vitality, abetted by summer sunshine and a martial atmosphere, make a formidable combination against the forces of common sense. This particular hospital was only thirty miles from the Line. On still days the turmoil of the guns could be heard quite plainly.
After breakfasting, Miss Lane took her friend by the elbow and led her to the great military map on the wall, with the position of the battle-line clearly defined upon it by an irregular frontier of red worsted, and said:
“Helen, listen! Just where are we on this little old map?”
Miss Ryker, who possessed the unusual feminine accomplishment of being able to read maps and railroad time-tables, laid a slender finger-tip upon the blue chalk-mark which designated the geographical position of the hospital.
“And,” pursued Miss Lane, in a low voice, “_where do we go from here_?”
Miss Ryker, who was a girl of few words, began to measure out distances with her finger and thumb.
“The nearest point to us,” she announced at last, “is a place called Delficelles.”
“Delficelles? Our boys captured it not long ago,” said Frances in confirmation. “I guess the trenches must lie just beyond.”
On one point she was right: Delficelles had been captured by an American Division a fortnight previously. On the other she was wrong, for a reason which will presently appear.
“We are going to visit them,” continued Miss Lane.
“How do we get there?” enquired her practical friend.
Miss Lane looked stealthily round, as a precaution against eavesdroppers. Then she smiled seraphically.
“I guess we can do it on our faces,” she remarked.