"You leave it to us gipsies," she assured them. "Bless you, we're used to this kind of job. There's a lot of us altogether working here, and I'll pass the word on. There'll be scouts this evening behind nearly every hedge, and if any German comes this way we'll get him, I promise you. You keep your eye on that Mrs. Vernon! We may want a signal. Look here, lady; come to the back of that shed, and I'll teach you the gipsies' whistle. Anybody with Romany blood in them's bound to answer it."
The gipsy's whistle was a peculiar bird-like call, not very easy to imitate. Raymonde had to try again and again before she could accomplish it to her instructress's satisfaction. At last, however, she had it perfectly.
"Don't use it till you must," cautioned her dark-eyed confederate; "but, if we hear it, it will bring the lot of us out. Now I must go back to my picking, or the agent will be turning me off."
"And I must rush back to the camp," declared Raymonde, remembering that Miss Gibbs, who had stayed with the invalid, would expect a report of the visit to the telephone. The excitement of the German letter had temporarily banished Katherine's illness from her thoughts, and she reproached herself for her unkindness in forgetting her friend. The doctor called during the course of the morning, and, after examining the patient, pronounced her complaint to be neither measles, chicken-pox, nor anything of an infectious character, but merely a rash due to the eating of too many strawberries.
"They cause violent dyspepsia in some people," he remarked. "I will make up a bottle of medicine, if you can send anybody over on a bicycle for it this afternoon. You mustn't eat any more strawberries, young lady. They'd be simply poison to you at present. Oh yes! you may go and pick them; the occupation will do you no harm."
Much relieved that they had not started a centre of infection in the camp, Katherine and Miss Gibbs returned to work after lunch, the latter issuing special instructions to her girls against the excessive consumption of the fruit they were gathering. Katherine was inclined to pose as an interesting invalid, and to claim sympathy, but the general feeling of her schoolfellows was against that attitude, and the verdict was "Greedy pig! Serves her right!" which was not at all to her satisfaction.