was
fitted up in very great style: long carpeted corridors opening out into
sort of domed winter gardens, something like the snake house at the Zoo.
We came at length to a particularly lofty, domed hall, from which opened
several large bathrooms. Splendid places. A row of large white enamelled
baths along one wall, cork mats on the floor, and one enormous central
water supply, hot and cold, which you diverted to whichever bath you
chose by means of a long flexible rubber pipe. Soap, sponges, towels,
_ad lib_. You can imagine what this palatial water grotto meant to us,
when, at other times, our best bath was of saucepan capacity, taken on
the cold stone floor of a farm room. We lay and boiled the trenches out
of our systems in that palatial asylum. Glorious! lying back in a long
white enamel bath in a warm foggy atmosphere of steam, watching one's
toes floating in front. When this was over, and we had been grimaced off
the premises by "inmates" at the windows, we went back into Bailleul
and made for the "Faucon d'Or," an old hotel that stands in the square.
Here we had a civilized meal. Tablecloth, knives, forks, spoons, waited
on, all that sort of thing. You could have quite a good dinner here if
you liked. A curious thought occurred to me then, and as it occurs again
to me now I write it down. Here it is: If the authorities gave one
permission, one could have rooms at the Faucon d'Or and go to the war
daily. It would be quite possible to, say, have an early dinner, table
d'hote (with, say, a half-bottle of Salmon and Gluckstein), get into
one's car and go to the trenches, spend the night sitting in a small
damp hole in the ground, or glaring over the parapet, and after "stand
to" in the morning, go back in the car in time for breakfast. Of course,
if there was an attack, the car would have to wait--that's all; and of
course you would come to an understanding with the hotel management that
the terms were for meals taken in the hotel, and that if you had to
remain in the trenches the terms must be reduced accordingly.

[Illustration: I hear you callin' me]

A curious war this; you _can_ be at a table d'hote dinner, a music-hall
entertainment afterwards, and within half an hour be enveloped in the
most uncomfortable, soul-destroying trench ever known. I said you can
be; I wish I could say you always are.

The last time I was at Bailleul, not many months ago, I heard that we
could no longer have baths at the asylum; I