rders," she cried. "If you
can't get a bed, come back here; but at least go and see what you can
do."

That was typical of Miss Macnaughtan. Difficulties did not exist for
her. When quite a young girl she made up her mind that no lack of money,
time, or strength should ever prevent her doing anything she wanted to
do. It certainly never prevented her doing anything she felt she _ought_
to do.

The war provided her with a supreme opportunity for service, and she did
not fail to take advantage of it. Of her work in Belgium, especially at
the soup-kitchen, I believe it is impossible to say too much. According
to _The Times_, "The lady with the soup was everything to thousands of
stricken men, who would otherwise have gone on their way fasting."

Among individual cases, too, there were many men who benefited by some
special care bestowed on them by her. There was one wounded Belgian to
whom my aunt gave my address before she left for Russia that he might
have someone with whom he might correspond. I used to hear from him
regularly, and every letter breathed gratitude to "la dame ecossaise."
He said she had saved his life.

Miss Macnaughtan's lectures to munition-workers were, perhaps, the best
work that she did during the war. She was a charming speaker, and I
never heard one who got more quickly into touch with an audience. As I
saw it expressed in one of the papers "Stiffness and depression vanished
from any company when she took the platform." Her enunciation was
extraordinarily distinct, and she had an arresting delivery which
compelled attention from the first word to the last.

She never minced the truth about the war, but showed people at home how
far removed it was from being a "merry picnic."

"They say recruiting will stop if people know what is going on at the
Front," she used to tell them. "I am a woman, but I know what I would do
if I were a man when I heard of these things. _I would do my durndest._"

All through her life the idea of personal service appealed to Miss
Macnaughtan. She never sent a message of sympathy or a gift of help
unless it was quite impossible to go herself to the sufferer.

She was only a girl when she heard of what proved to be the fatal
accident to her eldest brother in the Argentine. She went to him by the
next ship, alone, save for the escort of his old yacht's skipper, and a
journey to the Argentine in those days was a big undertaking for a
delicate young girl. On another oc