Gradually both girls were given a little more to do than simply scrubbing the wards clean, taking trolleys round and emptying bedpans. Sister Eloise had long since spotted Molly’s natural ability to nurse. An able and dedicated nurse herself, she recognised the same concern for her patients in Molly, the simple efficiency with which she treated them; the easy way she talked to the men and the response she drew from them. She was always calm in a crisis, and there were enough of those, both when more wounded arrived and in the routine caring. Though Molly had not even had the basic Red Cross training that Sarah had, she seemed instinctively to know what to do or say. Because Sister Eloise had very little English, when Sister Marie-Paul was not there she had to rely on Molly to talk to the English patients for her. Molly’s French had been non-existent, but she was picking up the words and phrases she needed with increasing rapidity, and though she could not hold a conversation in French, nor even follow one between the nuns, she could now make herself understood about matters in the ward.
