Now the station of the Eastern Railway at Toul was amply large for the ordinary peace-time needs of the eleven thousand folk who lived in the town, but long since its modest facilities had also been swamped by the war-time necessities thrust upon it. It was humanly impossible to crowd another single facility within its four tight brick walls. They told her as much. "I know that," said Miss Andress quietly. "We shall have to have a big tent set up in the station yard. I shall speak to the railway authorities about it, and gain their permission." In vain the army officers argued with her as to the futility of such a step. They, themselves, had thought of such procedure for their own increasing activities, but had been refused a tent, very politely but very firmly. Yet those refusals were not final. There were two other factors now to be taken into consideration--one was the potency of the very phrase, _Croix Rouge Américaine_, with the French, and the other was the persuasive ability of a bright New York woman who, having made up her mind what it was that she wanted to get, was not going to be happy until she had gotten it. She got the tent--the permission and all else that went with the getting it up, of course. In the spring of 1919 it still was there, although in use as a check room instead of a canteen; for the canteen service long before had outgrown even its generous facilities. It spread in various directions; into a regular hotel for enlisted men, right across the narrow street from the station; a resthouse for both officers and enlisted men back on the Route de Paris about a block distant; a huge new canteen on the station grounds, and still another on one of the long island-platforms between the tracks, so that men held in passing trains--all of which stopped at Toul for coal and water, if nothing else--and so unable to go even into the station to feel the comforting hand of the Red Cross, might be served with good things of both food and drink.