But Barbara flushed so painfully that tears filled her eyes.
“So that is what you think of me, is it, Nona?” she queried. But she offered no further reproaches; only turning quietly toward the driver of the ambulance said, “Drive on, will you, please. I too am unwilling to go back now. We will, of course, be as careful as possible, since only in that way can we really help.”
Then nobody said another word for the next half an hour. Perhaps their hearts were too full for speech or their nerves on too terrible a tension. Also the noise of the firing as they approached nearer the line of the British trenches grew more appalling.
But along the way Nona slipped her hand inside Barbara’s and though her lips were not opened, her apology was made and accepted. Moreover, in a sub-conscious fashion Barbara appreciated that no distrust had been intended. For indeed, the two girls were daily becoming closer and closer friends now that their ambulance work gave them the chance for spending long hours in each other’s society. Unlike as they were they appreciated the very differences between them.
But now was not the time for thinking of themselves nor of their friendship.
The thought of what lay before them called only for brave silences.
With great skill and care the driver of their Red Cross ambulance moved in the direction of the battle. There could be no doubt in any mind of what was taking place. Therefore to approach even within the neighborhood of the little field hospital near the trenches required infinite caution and judgment.
Once the car stopped short. Thirty yards before them a giant shell tore through the air and fell, ripping a tunnel in the green earth. The big ambulance wagon felt the shock of the explosion, but was not sufficiently near to be endangered, except of course the thought would force itself: Next time would they escape so easily?
Yet mysteriously Nona and not even Barbara were so frightened as one might expect. In moments of great peril, as we all know, a courage is born which one does not have in the lesser moments of life.
Once Barbara thought with a whimsical twisting of her lips no one saw, that in all probability she was so terrified that she had no ordinary method of showing it. One could not scream or cry out and certainly one could not weep like a nervous school girl. Having made up her mind to go through with whatever lay before them, stoicism was the only possible way of facing the situation.