t present I appear
to be a somewhat unsuccessful Paul Revere. But would you mind
explaining, while you are washing the dirt out of this plagued cut on my
forehead, why you are wearing a costume that seems to suggest a
combination of an Indian princess' outfit and a soldier's uniform?"

Marta Clark was devoting her attention to the other soldier, who did not
appear to be hurt but only slightly dazed from his mishap.

Bettina for an instant regretted that she was unable to change places
with Marta. She had studied first aid, of course, along with her Camp
Fire work, but was not accustomed to masculine patients.

Moreover, Bettina considered that the young officer was showing an
unwarranted personal interest in his first war nurse. As a matter of
fact, she entirely refused to pay any attention to his questioning.

CHAPTER II

The Land of Romance

Two weeks later two women were walking up and down a garden path in the
moonlight.

Across from them stood a long, low adobe house of a single story. The
veranda, extending from one end to the other, was so thickly covered
with a flowering vine that even in the moonlight one could get the
reflection of its brilliant color. The air was scented with the fragrant
perfume of roses and the blossoms of orange and lemon trees. From behind
the soft shading of the vine across the road came the brilliant twanging
of a guitar and a mandolin. Two voices were singing a Spanish love song.

Farther away under the deeper shadow of the moon a white cross arose
above a mass of fallen stone.

"I declare, Mollie, this is the old world, not the new, isn't it? I feel
as if we had traveled away from our own country today into a foreign
land; but what land I cannot say, because this place tonight must be
more beautiful and more romantic than even Spain itself. Yet one is not
sorry to forget for a little while the present world and its tragedies!"

The other woman shook her head. The two sisters were the same height,
had nearly the same character of features and the same coloring;
nevertheless were curiously unlike.

One conspicuous difference was in their voices.

"Do you know, Polly, I think perhaps you have made a mistake in bringing
the Camp Fire girls to spend the summer in so picturesque a place. We
probably shall have a romance on our hands before the season is over,"
Mrs. Webster answered. "It is natural of course that _you_ should be
affected by such surroundings. But when a