munication.

I have said that they were extraordinarily dressed. Rather they were
most practically dressed. Under khaki-coloured leather coats these two
young women wore khaki riding breeches with puttees and flannel
shirts. They had worn nothing else for six months. They wore knitted
caps on their heads, for the weather was extremely cold, and mittens.

The fire was blazing high and we urged them to take off their outer
wraps. For a reason which we did not understand at the time they
refused. They sat with their leather coats buttoned to the throat, and
coloured violently when urged to remove them.

"But what are you doing here?" said one of the officers. "What brings
you so far from P----"

They said they had had an errand, and went on drinking tea.

"What sort of an errand?" a young lieutenant demanded.

They exchanged glances.

"Shopping," they said, and took more tea.

"Shopping, for what?" He was smilingly impertinent.

They hesitated. Then: "For mutton," one of them replied. Both looked
relieved. Evidently the mutton was an inspiration. "We have found some
mutton." They turned to me. "It is a real festival. You have no idea
how long it is since we've had anything of the sort."

"Mutton!" cried the novelist, with frankly greedy eyes. "It makes
wonderful soup! Where can I get it?"

They told her, and she stood up, tied on her seven veils and departed,
rejoicing, in a car that had come for her.

When she was gone Colonel M---- turned to one of the young women.

"Now," he said, "out with it. What brings you both so far from your
thriving and prosperous little community?"

The irony of that was lost on me until later, when I discovered that
the said community was a destroyed town with the advance line of
trenches running through it, and that they lived in the only two whole
rooms in the place.

"Out with it," said the colonel, and scowled ferociously.

Driven into a corner they were obliged to confess. For three hours
that afternoon they had stood in a freezing wind on a desolate field,
while King Albert of Belgium decorated for bravery various officers
and--themselves. The jealously fastened coats were thrown open.
Gleaming on the breast of each young woman was the star of the Order
of Leopold!

"But why did you not tell us?" the officers demanded.

"Because," was the retort, "you have never approved of us; you have
always wanted us sent back to England. The whole British Army has
objected to o