Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left her
free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the great
hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a canteen
in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the Armistice in a
comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de Morsigny, and found
much solace together. But their hotel had been commandeered for one of the
Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with her sister-in-law, and Alexina,
Janet, and Alice had found with no little difficulty vacant rooms in a
second-rate pension in Passy. The food was even worse than at the hotel,
the rooms were barely heated, and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless
and jammed, and taxicabs in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with
drivers of an unsurpassable effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles
a day in all weathers. It is true that she could have rented a limousine
for a thousand francs a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of
her class to economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre
of their devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply
camions of the Y.M.C.A.
II
Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door
and inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many
cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard day's
work and the next.
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