most part reserved for
themselves, and these we used in the daytime as our offices.

But the real sights of our establishment were our kitchen and
our chef; we might almost have been an Oxford college. Maurice
had come to us in quite a romantic way. One night we took in a soldier
with a bullet wound of the throat. For some days he was pretty
bad, but he won all our hearts by his cheerfulness and pluck.
When at last he improved sufficiently to be able to speak, he
told us that he was the assistant chef at the Hotel Metropole
in Brussels. We decided that he ought to be kept in a warm,
moist atmosphere for a long time, and he was installed in the
kitchen. He was a genius at making miracles out of nothing,
and his soups made out of bacon rind and old bones, followed
by entrees constructed from bully beef, were a dream. He was
assisted by the nuns from Louvain who had accompanied us
to Poperinghe, and who now worked for us on the sole condition
that we should not desert them. They were very picturesque
working in the kitchen in their black cloaks and coifs. At meal-times
the scene was a most animated one, for, as we had no one
to wait on us, we all came in one after the other, plate in hand,
while Maurice stood with his ladle and presided over the
ceremonies, with a cheery word for everyone, assisted by the silent nuns.

The getting of supplies became at times a very serious
question. Needless to say, Furnes was destitute of anything to
eat, drink, burn, or wear, and Dunkirk was soon in a similar
case. We had to get most of our provisions over from England,
and our milk came every morning on the Government transport,
from Aylesbury. For some weeks we were very hard up, but the
officer in charge of the naval stores at Dunkirk was very good to
us, and supplied us with bully beef, condensed milk, cheese,
soap, and many other luxuries till we could get further supplies
from home. We used a considerable quantity of coal, and on
one occasion we were faced by the prospect of an early famine,
for Furnes and Dunkirk were empty. But nothing was ever too
great a strain for the resources of our housekeeper. She
discovered that there was a coal-heap at Ramscapelle, five
miles away, and in a few hours an order had been obtained
from the Juge d'Instruction empowering us to take the coal if we
could get it, and the loan of a Government lorry had been
coaxed out of the War Lords. The only difficulty was that for the
moment the Germans w