The bouncing ambulance was swiftly out of sight of the chateau gate. Ruth sighed.
"Say! isn't there anybody at all who can go with those supplies they're in need of but you, Miss Ruth?" inquired Charlie Bragg, looking sideways at her.
"No. I am alone at Clair, you know quite well, Charlie. The supplies are entirely under my care. I can teach somebody else over there at the bombed hospital in a short time how to handle the things. Meanwhile, the matron--or somebody else--can do my work here. It would not do to send a greenhorn to such a busy hospital as this must be to which you are taking me."
"Busy! You said it!" observed the driver. "You'll see a lot of rough stuff, Miss Ruth; and you haven't been used to that. What'll Tom Cameron say?" and he grinned suddenly.
Ruth laughed a little. "Every tub must stand on its own bottom, Aunt Alvirah says. I must do my duty."
"It'll be a mighty dangerous trip. I'm not fooling you. There are places on the road---- Well! the Boches are all stirred up and they are likely to drop a shell or two almost anywhere, you know."
"You came through it, didn't you?" she demanded pluckily.
"Honest to goodness I'm not. They sent me over for the supplies and somebody to attend to them."
"Well?" she said inquiringly, as Charlie ceased to speak.
"But I didn't think you'd have to make the trip. Isn't there anybody else, Miss Ruth?" and the young fellow was quite earnest now.
"Nobody," she said firmly. "No use telling me anything more, Charlie. For the very reason the trip is dangerous, you wouldn't want me to put it off on somebody else, would you?"
He said no more. The car rattled down into the little town, with its crooked, paved streets and its countless smells. Clair was the center of a farming community, and, in some cases, the human inhabitants and the dumb beasts lived very close together.
The hospital sprawled over considerable ground. It was but two stories in height, save at the back, where a third story was run up for the "cells" of the nurses and the other women engaged in the work. Ruth ran up at once to her own tiny room to pack her handbag before she did anything else.
The matron met her at the supply-room door when she came down. She was a voluble, if not volatile, Frenchwoman of certain age.