ns originally had been
stored. The box had been removed, however, and the food eaten at
luncheon.

"I am absurd!" Bianca exclaimed, clutching at Nora Jamison's hand, as
she was sitting beside her. "But I thought I felt something stir. I
wonder if the excitement of our journey is having a strange influence
upon me?"

"I don't think so," the older girl returned, "I have been conscious of
life, a movement of some kind underneath us ever since we left the
little French farmhouse. I say I have been conscious, no, I have not
been exactly that, only puzzled and uncomfortable."

Leaning over, Nora at this instant lifted the curtain, and Bianca
bending forward at the same time, they both became aware of the figure
of the little French girl who had vanished a few moments before their
departure from her home.

"Sonya!" Bianca called.

This was scarcely necessary, since by this time every occupant of the
car knew equally well what had happened and curiously enough, without
discussion, understood the explanation for the child's action.

The little girl had believed that this group of women and girls, wearing
the Red Cross of service, were her friends and if possible would protect
her from what she feared most in all the world, the grey uniformed
German soldiers. Also they were leaving the neighborhood where she had
lived under a burden of terror.

Her one desire was to escape from the captured town where the Germans
had been in authority so many weary months. As Nora Jamison and Bianca
both struggled to assist the child, they found she could scarcely help
herself, so stiff had she become from her uncomfortable position.

Yet she managed with their aid to climb up and sit crowded close between
Bianca and Nora Jamison.

"What are you going to do with this child, Sonya?" Bianca demanded, more
sympathetic than she cared to reveal, remembering her own childhood,
which had been more lonely and difficult than any one had ever realized.
Not even Sonya, who had come to her rescue in those past days in Italy,
more from a combination of circumstance than from any great affection
for her, had ever understood.

In response Sonya bit her lips and frowned. There was something about
the little French girl which had attracted her strongly at the first
sight of her, an attraction she could not have explained, unless it were
compassion, and yet she had seen many pathetic, forsaken children during
her war work in France.

"I am sure I do