the Eager Soul. Until dusk the Gilded Youth had kept her in his
donjon--a first class compartment jammed with hand-baggage, and
where she had insisted that the Young Doctor should come also. We
knew that without being told; also it was evident as we passed up
and down the car aisle during the day that she was acting as a sort
of human Baedeker to the Young Doctor, while the Gilded Youth, to
whom chateaux and French countryside were an old, old story, sat
by and hooted. But the airplanes pulled him out of his donjon keep
and the Young Doctor with him. He wasn't above showing the Young
Doctor how much a Gilded Youth really knows about mechanics and
airplanes, and we slipped in and chatted with the Eager Soul. We
had a human interest in the contest between the Gilded Youth and
the Young Doctor, and a sporting interest which centered in the
daily score. And we gathered this: That it was the Young Doctor's
day. For he was in France to help the greatest cause in the world;
and the Gilded Youth affected to be in France--to enjoy the greatest
outdoor game in the world. But he had made it plain that day to
the Eager Soul that working eighteen hours a day under shell fire,
driving an ambulance, was growing tame. He was going back, of course,
but he was thinking seriously of the air service. The Doctor wanted
no thrills. He was willing to boil surgical instruments or squirt
disinfectant around kitchens to serve. And the Eager Soul liked
that attitude, though it was obvious to us, that she was in the
war game as a bit of a sport and because it was too dull in her
Old Home Town, "somewhere in the United States." And we knew also
what she did not admit, even if she recognized it, that in the
Old Home Town, men of the sort to attract women of her spirit and
intelligence were scarce--and she was out looking for her own Sir
Galahad, as he went up and down the earth searching for the Holy
Grail. The war to her, we knew, was a great opportunity to enjoy