Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/181

 tion work for the British Fifth Army, had thrown down their shovels and tools, grabbed guns, and gone in.

"You've some good girls—some awfully good girls out that way, too!" the English pilot cried.

Gerry was in his seat and starting his motor so he just heard that; he rose from the field and for several moments all his conscious attention was given to catching proper formation with the machines returning along with him to the battle; but subconsciously his mind was going to those girls, the American girls—those "awfully good" girls out that way. He did not know what they might be doing this day—what it was which won from the English pilot the praise in his voice. Gerry had known that American girls had been out "that way," he had known about the Smith College girls, particularly—the score or so who called themselves the Smith College Relief Unit and who, he understood, had been supplying the poor peasants and looking after old people and children and doing all sorts of practical and useful things in little villages about Nesle and Ham. He did not know any of those girls; but he did know Cynthia Gail; and now, as he found himself in flight formation and flying evenly, thought of her emerged more vividly than it had previously upon that morning.

When the news had reached him far away on the evening before that the Germans had broken through in that neighborhood where she was, he had visualized her in his fears as a helpless victim before the enemy's advance. The instincts she had stirred in him were to hurry him to her protection; that morning as he had looked down upon the refugees on the roads, mentally he had put her among the multitude fleeing and to be defended. But the shout of