So it is little wonder that during her walk Nona's thoughts were now and then engaged with her own affairs. Yet after a little her attention wandered from the immediate future and she fell to recalling the history of the past years' experiences, her own and her three friends.
No wonder Barbara was often lonely and homesick for Dick Thornton.
She had become engaged to him on the fog-bound trip she had made with him in getting Eugenia safely out of Belgium. Remembering Eugenia's escape, Nona said a short prayer of thankfulness. After her hiding of the Belgian officer and his family from the German authorities, she would never have been allowed to leave Belgium unpunished had she not been an American woman. Remembering the fate of the English girl who had committed the same crime, Nona appreciated how much they had to be thankful for.
And now Eugenia was married to Captain Castaigne, the young French officer. Curious that among the four of them who had come from the United States to do Red Cross work among the Allies, Eugenia should be the first to marry! She, a New England old maid, disapproving of matrimony and, above all, of international marriages!
Yet the wedding had taken place in the previous spring at the little French "Farmhouse with the Blue Front Door," where the four girls had spent the most cheerful months since their arrival in Europe for the war nursing.
Only once had Nona and Mildred deserted their posts in Belgium, where they had continued Eugenia's work of caring for the homeless Belgian children. Then they had gone to attend her wedding, but had returned to Belgium as soon as possible.
But Eugenia and Captain Castaigne had taken scarcely more time for their own honeymoon.
Soon after the ceremony Captain Castaigne had gone to rejoin his regiment and three days after Eugenia had become a member of the staff of a French hospital near her husband's line of trenches.
So it turned out that Barbara Meade was left at the Chateau d'Amélie, as Madame Castaigne's friend and companion. Dick Thornton boarded in the village near by, so that he and Barbara had a number of happy months together.
But Dick had finally decided that he must return to America and had urged Barbara and his sister Mildred to return with him. Of course, Nona had been invited to accompany them, but no special pressure had been brought upon her.