over which a fall of earth had successfully pushed
some wire netting from the fence above. I waited patiently, and in due
time caught sight of a little black, yellow, and white kitten; but the
minute I made a grab for it, it bolted. I pulled the netting away, but
the hole was much too deep for so small a creature to get out by itself,
and it was much too frightened to let me catch it. With great difficulty
I extricated myself and ran to the cookhouse, where I soon enlisted
Bridget's aid. We got some small pieces of soft raw meat and crawled to
the top of the bank again. After long and tedious coaxing I at last
grabbed the little thing spitting furiously while Bridget gave it some
food, and in return for my trouble it bit and scratched like a young
devil! It was terribly hungry and bolted all we had brought. When we got
her to the cook-house she ran round the place like a mad thing, and
turned out to be rather a fast cat altogether when she grew up. We
tossed for her, Bridget won, and she was duly christened with a drop of
tinned milk on her forehead, "Melisande in the Wood."

The magpie belonged to Russell, and came from Peuplinghe. Magpies are
supposed to be unlucky birds. This one certainly brought no luck to its
different owners. Shortly after its arrival Russell was obliged to
return to England for good. Before going, however, she presented Jacques
to Captain White at Val de Lievre. Sure enough after some time he was
posted to the Boche prisoner camp at Marquise--a job he did not relish
at all. I don't know if he took Jacques with him, but the place was
bombed shortly after and the Huns killed many of their own men, and
presumably Jacques as well. So he did his bit for France.

The canaries belonged to Renny--at least at first she had only one. It
happened in this wise. The man at the disinfector (where we took our
cars and blankets to be syringed after an infectious case), had had a
canary given him by his "best girl" (French). He did not want a canary
and had nowhere to keep it, but, as he explained, he did not know enough
of the language to say so, and thought the easiest way out of the
difficulty was to accept it. "Give me the bird, proper, she 'as," he
added.

The trouble was he did not reckon on her asking after it, which she most
surely did. He could hardly confess to her that he had passed the
present on so instead he conveyed the news to her, somehow, that the
"pore little bird had gone and died on 'im."