wouldn't be a bad little place (except for the drains) if only
there wasn't this horrid influence about it all. I always particularly
dislike toddling after people like a little lost dog, but here I find
that unless I am with somebody the ghosts get the better of me.

The villa is being ruined by us I fear, but I have a woman to clean it,
and I am trying to keep it in order. It is a cold little place for we
have no fires. We can, by pumping, get a little very cold water, and
there is a tap in the bath-room and one basin at which everyone tries to
wash and shave at the same time. We get our meals at a butcher's shop,
where there is a large room which we more than fill. The lights of the
town are all out by 6 o'clock, so we grope about, but there is a lamp in
our dining-room. When we come out we have to pass through the butcher's
shop, and one may find oneself running into the interior of a sheep.

We get up about 7 o'clock and fight for the basin. Then we walk round to
the butcher's shop and have breakfast at 7.30. Most people think they
start off for the day's work at 8, but it is generally quite 10 o'clock
before all the brown-hooded ambulances with their red crosses have moved
out of the yard. We do not as a rule meet again till dinner-time, and
even then many of the party are absent. They come in at all times, very
dirty and hungry, and the greeting is always the same, "Did you get
many?"--_i.e._, "Have you picked up many wounded?"

One night Dr. Munro got bowled over by the actual air force created by a
shell, which however did not hit him. Yesterday Mr. Secher was shot in
the leg. I am amazed that not more get hit. They are all very cheery
about it.

To-day we heard that a jolly French boy with white teeth, who has been
very good at making coffee at our picnic lunches, was put up against a
tree and shot at daybreak. Someone had made him drunk the night before,
and he had threatened an officer with a revolver.

[Page Heading: A DRAMATIC INCIDENT]

_7 November. St. Malo les Bains._--Lady Bagot turned up here to-day, and
I lunched with her at the Hotel des Arcades. Just before lunch a bomb
was dropped from a Taube overhead, and hardly had we sat down to lunch
when a revolver shot rang through the room. A French officer had
discharged his pistol by mistake, and he lay on the floor in his scarlet
trews. The scene was really the Adelphi, and as the man had only
slightly hurt himself one was able to appreciate the s