Kit narrates from Senlis, France in May 1918. Two months after the evacuation from Blérancourt, Kit and the Cards work in a makeshift army hospital. They care for soldiers who are wounded or have been injured in mustard gas attacks. Overwhelmed by their suffering, Kit retreats to her books, thinking that “[a]s long as I could return to the library of my mind, I felt I could face whatever came” (194). Kit is encouraged when she receives a letter from Sidonie in the Loire Valley, marveling that people there have functioning markets and libraries, that they talk about flowers instead of barbed wire.

Kit and Cookie get to know each other, and Kit asks Cookie why she always stayed in the kitchen instead of joining the rest of the Cards at mealtime. Cookie replies that she was respecting the “natural order” because she was not an heiress, and Kit asks her to promise to join them when they return to headquarters.

Kit reads to the men for an hour a day. At first she is surprised when the men call her “sister,” thinking they’ve mistaken her for a nun, but then likes the connection it implies, as though each of the men is a brother to her.