"But that will
have to be my part of the fight."
She had written to Folk. No female nurses were supposed to be allowed
within the battle zone; but under pressure of shortage the French staff
were relaxing the rule, and Folk had pledged himself to her discretion.
"I am not doing you any kindness," he had written. "You will have to
share the common hardships and privations, and the danger is real. If I
didn't feel instinctively that underneath your mask of sweet
reasonableness you are one of the most obstinate young women God ever
made, and that without me you would probably get yourself into a still
worse hole, I'd have refused." And then followed a list of the things
she was to be sure to take with her, including a pound or two of
Keating's insect powder, and a hint that it might save her trouble, if
she had her hair cut short.
There was but one other woman at the hospital. It had been a farmhouse.
The man and both sons had been killed during the first year of the war,
and the woman had asked to be allowed to stay on. Her name was Madame
Lelanne.
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