trenches. She went on:

"The upper story of the house is sheer wreck, as you may see, but the
ground-floor is quite habitable. So much so that if the shells did not
strike the poor dear place so often, I should suggest your turning it into
a Convalescent Home."

"We may have to try the plan yet," said Saxham. "The Railway Institute is
frightfully overcrowded."

"And," she told him, "a shell struck there yesterday evening, and burst in
the larger ward."

"I had not heard of it," he said. "Was anybody hurt?"

"No one, thank God! But the fire was difficult to put out, until one of
the Sisters thought of sand."

"It was an incendiary shell?" Disgust and contempt swelled his deep-cut
nostrils and flamed from his vivid blue eyes. "And yet these Kaiser's
gunners, in their blue-and-white Death or Glory uniforms, can hardly
pretend ignorance of the Geneva Convention. But--your question?"

"It is--Children!" She beckoned to the two nuns, who stood at a little
distance apart holding the washing-basket between them. "I will ask you to
go on slowly before me with the basket. I will overtake you when I have
spoken to Dr. Saxham."

"Surely, Reverend Mother." One tall, pale, and thin, the other round and
rosy, they were alike in the placid, cheerful serenity of their good eyes
and readily smiling lips. "And won't we be after taking the bundle?"

"No, no! It is heavy, and I am as strong as both of you together."

"Very well, Reverend Mother."

They were obediently moving on.

"A moment." Saxham stopped them. "If you two ladies have no objection to a
little crowding, the spider will hold both of you as well as the bundle
and the basket of washing. At least, it looks like a basket of washing."

All three laughed as they accepted his offer, assuring him that his
suspicions were correct. For neither Kaffir laundrywoman or Hindu _dhobi_
would go down any more to the washing troughs by the river, for fear of
crossing that Stygian flood of blackness rivalling their own, supposing,
as Beauvayse once suggested, that there is a third-class ferry for niggers
and persons of colour? And from the waterworks on the Eastern side of the
town the supply had been cut off by the enemy, so that the taps of
Gueldersdorp had ceased to yield.

Old wells and springs had been reopened, cleaned, and brought into use for
drinking purposes, so that of a water-famine there could be no fear. But
the element became expensive when retailed by the tin b