Besides these larger articles, they had managed to store away in their trunks the materials necessary for the regulation Camp Fire work, honor beads and the jewelry indicating the various orders in the Camp Fire. If they were to interest French girls in the movement, they must have the required paraphernalia. But the school at the farm house was not primarily a place where the French girls of the neighborhood were only to be interested in Camp Fire ideas. It was also a practical school. During the past year Marta Clark had been studying kindergarten. She, with Yvonne to help her, had charge of the tiny French children whom they were able to persuade to come daily to the big farm house. They were such starved, pathetic children, some of them almost babies! Yet they had been through so much suffering, their eyes had looked upon such hideous sights, that many of them were either nervous wrecks or else stupefied. Surely there could be no better service to France than this effort to bring back to her children a measure of their natural happiness! Yvonne and Marta devised wonderful games in one end of the big school room. At midday Vera and Peggy always appeared with a special luncheon for their small guests and for the older ones as well. Bettina Graham and Alice Ashton took charge of the older pupils, and in teaching it appeared that Alice at last had found her metier. Vera and Peggy also worked at the farming out of doors. More important than any other of Miss Patricia Lord's gifts to the community farm and the surrounding country was a motor tractor, which one day had rolled unconcernedly into the farm house yard, an ugly giant, proving of as much future value to the poor farmers in the neighborhood as any good giant of the ancient fairy tales. Fortunately Mary Gilchrist was able to explain its use to the French peasants who had never seen the like before, and to show them how speedily their devastated land might again be turned into plowed fields. Vera and Peggy made frequent trips to the nearby villages, gaining the friendship of the country people, inviting the younger ones to their farm and helping in whatever ways they could. Now and then Sally Ashton went with them and sometimes Sally played with the smallest of the children, but nearly always her interests were domestic. In contrast, Mary Gilchrist never remained in the house an hour if it were possible to be away. Besides engineering the tractor and being a general express delivery for the entire neighborhood, she had formed the habit of motoring into Soissons, which was one of the large towns nearby, and offering her services and the use of her car to the hospitals. Occasionally she spent days at a time driving invalided soldiers either from one hospital to another, or else in taking them out on drives for the fresh air and entertainment.