mitate. Raymonde had to try again and again before she could
accomplish it to her instructress's satisfaction. At last, however,
she had it perfectly.

"Don't use it till you must," cautioned her dark-eyed confederate;
"but, if we hear it, it will bring the lot of us out. Now I must go
back to my picking, or the agent will be turning me off."

"And I must rush back to the camp," declared Raymonde, remembering
that Miss Gibbs, who had stayed with the invalid, would expect a
report of the visit to the telephone. The excitement of the German
letter had temporarily banished Katherine's illness from her thoughts,
and she reproached herself for her unkindness in forgetting her
friend. The doctor called during the course of the morning, and, after
examining the patient, pronounced her complaint to be neither measles,
chicken-pox, nor anything of an infectious character, but merely a
rash due to the eating of too many strawberries.

"They cause violent dyspepsia in some people," he remarked. "I will
make up a bottle of medicine, if you can send anybody over on a
bicycle for it this afternoon. You mustn't eat any more strawberries,
young lady. They'd be simply poison to you at present. Oh yes! you may
go and pick them; the occupation will do you no harm."

Much relieved that they had not started a centre of infection in the
camp, Katherine and Miss Gibbs returned to work after lunch, the
latter issuing special instructions to her girls against the excessive
consumption of the fruit they were gathering. Katherine was inclined
to pose as an interesting invalid, and to claim sympathy, but the
general feeling of her schoolfellows was against that attitude, and
the verdict was "Greedy pig! Serves her right!" which was not at all
to her satisfaction.

"You're most unkind!" she wailed. "You've every one of you eaten quite
as many strawberries as I have, only I've a delicate digestion, and
can't stand them like you can. You're a set of ostriches! I believe
you'd munch turnips if you were sent to hoe them! I don't mind what
you say. So there!"

As half-past six drew on, and most of the workers were handing in
their last baskets for the day, Raymonde and Aveline kept watchful
eyes on Mrs. Vernon. They fully expected that she might disappear on
the way back to the camp, so, without making their purpose apparent,
they shadowed her, pretending that they were looking for flowers in
the hedge. They hung about in the vicinity of her tent