began to look very smart, and the seeds we had sown in the
spring came up and covered the huts with creepers. We had as many
flowers inside our huts as we could possibly get into the shell cases
and other souvenirs which perforce were turned into flower vases--a
change they must have thought rather singular. The steady boom of the
guns used to annoy me intensely, for it shook the petals off the roses
long before they would otherwise have fallen, and I used to call out,
crossly, "_Do_ stop that row, you're simply ruining my flowers." But
that made no difference to the distant gunners, who carried on night and
day causing considerably more damage than the falling petals from my
roses!

We began to classify the new girls as they came out, jokingly calling
them "Kitchener's" Army, "Derby's Scheme," and finally, "Conscripts."
The old "regulars" of course put on most fearful side. It was amusing
when an air-raid warning (a siren known as "mournful Mary") went at Mess
and the shrapnel began to fly, to see the new girls all rush out to
watch the little white balls bursting in the sky, and the old hands not
turning a hair but going on steadily with the bully beef or Maconochie,
whichever it happened to be. Then one by one the new ones would slink
back rather ashamed of their enthusiasm and take their seats, and in
time they in turn would smile indulgently as the still newer ones dashed
out to watch.

We had no dug-out to go to, even if we had wanted to. Our new mess tent
was built in the summer; and we said good-bye for ever to the murky
gloom of the old Indian flapper.

One day I had gone out to tea with Logan and Chris to an "Archie"
station at Pont le Beurre. During a pause I heard the following
conversation take place.

Host to Logan: "I suppose, being in a Convoy Camp, you hear nothing but
motor shop the whole time, and get to know quite a lot about them?"

"Rather," replied Logan, who between you and me hardly knew one end of a
car from the other, "I'm becoming quite conversant with the different
parts. One hears people exclaiming constantly: 'I've mislaid my big end
and can't think where I've put the carburettor!'" The host, who appeared
to know as much as she did, nodded sympathetically.

Chris and I happened to catch the Captain's eye, and we laughed for
about five minutes. That big-end story went the round of the camp too,
you may be quite sure.

Besides the regular work of barges, evacuation, and trains we had