The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Line, by Margaret Vandercook

THE RED CROSS GIRLS ON THE FRENCH FIRING LINE

BOOKS BY MARGARET VANDERCOOK

THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES

The Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge The Ranch Girls’ Pot of Gold The Ranch Girls at Boarding School The Ranch Girls in Europe The Ranch Girls at Home Again The Ranch Girls and their Great Adventure

THE RED CROSS GIRLS SERIES

The Red Cross Girls in the British Trenches The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Line The Red Cross Girls in Belgium The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army The Red Cross Girls with the Italian Army The Red Cross Girls Under the Stars and Stripes

STORIES ABOUT CAMP FIRE GIRLS

The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World The Camp Fire Girls Across the Sea The Camp Fire Girls’ Careers The Camp Fire Girls in After Years The Camp Fire Girls in the Desert The Camp Fire Girls at the End of the Trail

Captain Castaigne Lay Hidden Under a Pile of Bed Clothes—(See page 225)

The Red Cross Girls On the French Firing Line

By MARGARET VANDERCOOK

Author of “The Ranch Girls Series,” “Stories about Camp Fire Girls Series,” etc.

Illustrated

The John C. Winston Company Philadelphia

Copyright, 1916, by The John C. Winston Co.

CONTENTS

THE RED CROSS GIRLS ON THE FRENCH FIRING LINE

CHAPTER I Place de l’Opera

Not long after the beginning of the war in Europe four American girls set sail from New York City to aid in the Red Cross nursing.

When they boarded the “Philadelphia” they were almost strangers to one another. And never were girls more unlike.

Eugenia Peabody, the oldest of the four, hailed from Massachusetts and appeared almost as stern and forbidding as the rock-bound coasts. Privately the others insisted in the early part of their acquaintance that this same Eugenia must have been born an “old maid.”

Mildred Thornton was the daughter of a distinguished New York judge and her mother a prominent society woman. But Mildred herself cared little for a butterfly existence. With the call of the suffering sounding in her ears she had given up a luxurious existence for the hardships and perils of a Red Cross nurse.

The youngest of the four girls, Barbara Meade, was a very small person with a large store of energy and unexpectedness. And the last girl, Nona Davis, was a native of the conservative old city of Charleston, South Carolina. Although a mystery shadowed her mother’s history, Nona had been brought up by her father, a one-time Confederate general, with all the ideas and traditions of the old South.

Yet in spite of these contrasts in their natures and lives, the four American Red Cross girls had spent more than six months caring for the wounded British soldiers in the Sacred Heart Hospital in northern France.

With the closing of the last story the news had come that the headquarters of the hospital must be changed at once. At any hour the German invaders might swarm into the countryside.

There had been but little time to remove the wounded. So, not wishing to add to the responsibilities and finding themselves more in the way than of service, the four girls had escaped together to a small town in France farther away from the enemy’s line.

Here they concluded to offer their aid to the Croix de Rouge, or the Red Cross Society of France.

But this was in the spring, and now another autumn has come round.

One wonders what the four American girls are doing and where they are living.