had driven, as there was some mystification with
regard to the day and hour at which it was found. As she stepped smartly
up to the table the Colonel asked her how, when it occurred some ten
days ago, she could be sure it was 4.30 when she arrived on the scene.

"It was like this," said she. "When I heard it was a corpse, I thought
I'd have my tea first!" (This was almost as bad as the tape measure
episode and was of course conclusive. I might add, corpses were the only
jobs that were not allowed to interfere with meals.)

"Foreign bodies," in the shape of former Belgian patients, often drifted
up to camp in search of the particular "Mees" who had tended them at
Lamarck, as often as not bringing souvenirs made at great pains in the
trenches as tokens of their gratitude. It touched us very much to know
that they had not forgotten.

One night when my evening duty was nearing its close and I was just
preparing to go to my hut the telephone bell rang, and I was told to go
down to the hospital ship we had just loaded that afternoon for a man
reported to be in a dying condition, and not likely to stand the journey
across to England--I never could understand why those cases should have
been evacuated at all if there was any possibility of them becoming
suddenly worse; but I suppose a certain number of beds had to be cleared
for new arrivals, and individuals could not be considered. It seemed
very hard.

I drove down to the Quay in the inky blackness, it was a specially dark
night, turned successfully, and reported I had come for the case.

An orderly, I am thankful to say, came with him in the car and sat
behind holding his hand.

The boy called incessantly for his mother and seemed hardly to realize
where he was. I sat forward, straining my eyes in the darkness along
that narrow quay, on the look-out for the many holes I knew were only
too surely there.

The journey seemed to take hours, and I answered a query of the
orderly's as to the distance.

The boy heard my voice and mistook me for one of the Sisters, and then
followed one of the most trying half-hours I have ever been through.

He seemed to regain consciousness to a certain extent and asked me from
time to time,

"Sister, am I dying?"

"Will I see me old mother again, Sister?"

"Why have you taken me off the Blighty ship, Sister?"

Then there would be silence for a space, broken only by groans and an
occasional "Christ, but me back 'urts crool," and al