xcited
in a member of the medical profession.

"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who
tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo
of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a
respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying.

I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a
tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung
on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature--Pwomise?"

I promised.

XIX

AN ARMY COUNCIL

(_October 1914_)

All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy
between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the
delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that
unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey
found me at No. ---- General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F.
attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the
war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore
the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's
overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with
red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone
betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every
regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from
John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat.

"Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up,
our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were
more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and
waggons chock full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up.
And reservists wi' sore feet--out o' training, I reckon," he added
magisterially.

"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the
Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for
miles. We ain't no chickens."

"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach
them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish[13] when
they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady,
arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his
regiment.

"'Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it
afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and o