“I’ve made a will.  Trooper Burgess, a comrade—­my former valet—­carries a duplicate memorandum.  Don’t weep; I’ll live to make another.  But in this one I have written you that my mother’s letters and pictures are to be yours—­when I have a chance I’ll draw it in legal form.  And, dear, first be perfectly sure I’m dead, and then destroy my mother’s letters without reading them; and then look upon her face.  And I think you will forgive me when I tell you that it is for her sake that I can never marry.  But you will not understand why.”

Over this letter Ailsa had little time to wonder or to make herself wretched, for that week orders came to evacuate the Farm Hospital and send all sick and wounded to the General Hospital at Alexandria.

A telegram arrived, too, from Miss Dix, who was authorised to detail nurses by the Secretary of War, ordering the two nurses of Sainte Ursula’s Sisterhood to await letters of recommendation and written assignments to another hospital to be established farther south.  But where that hospital was to be built nobody seemed to know.

A week later a dozen Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome.  Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn’t endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to the home newspapers.

For a while confusion reigned, intensified by the stupendous mobilisation going on all around.

A medical officer came to the Farm Hospital and angrily informed Ailsa that the staff had had enough of women in the wards; and from forty cots forty half-dead, ghastly creatures partly rose and cursed the medical gentleman till his ears burned crimson,

Ailsa, in her thin gray habit bearing the scarlet heart, stood in the middle of the ward and defied him with her credentials.

“The medical staff of the army has only to lay its case before the Secretary of War,” she said, looking calmly at him, “and that is where the Sanitary Commission obtains its authority.  Meanwhile our orders detail us here for duty.”

“We’ll see about that!” he snapped, backing away.

“So will we,” said Ailsa, smiling.  But that afternoon she and Letty took an ambulance and went, in great distress of mind, to see Mother Angela, Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who had arrived from Indiana ready to continue hospital duties on the Potomac if necessary.

The lovely Superieure, a lady of rare culture and ability, took Ailsa’s hand in hers with a sad smile.

“Men’s prejudices are hard to meet.  The social structure of the world is built on them.  But men’s prejudices vanish when those same men fall sick.  The War Department has regularised our position; it will authorise yours.  You need not be afraid.”

She smiled again reminiscently.