w high?" asked the lady, determined to get to the bottom of it, and
not at all sure in her own mind he wasn't a conscientious objector
masquerading in uniform. "As all t-t-the other m-m-men were k-k-killed
b-b-b-by t-t-t-the same s-s-shell, t-t-there was n-n-no one t-t-there
t-t-t-to c-c-c-count," he replied modestly. (I knew the whole story of
how he had been left for two whole days in No-man's-land, with Boche
shells dropping round the place where he was lying, and could have
killed her cheerfully if the whole thing had not been so funny.)

Having gleaned more lurid details with which we all too willingly
supplied her, she finally departed.

"Fierce by name and fierce by nature," I said, as the door closed. "I
wonder sometimes if those women spend all their time rushing from bed to
bed asking the men to describe all they've been through--I feel like
writing to _John Bull_ about it," I added, "but I don't believe the
average person would believe it. Tact seems to be a word unknown in some
vocabularies." The cream of the whole thing was that, not content with
the information she had gleaned, when she got downstairs, she asked to
see my nurse. The poor thing was having tea at the time, but went
running down in case it was something important.

"Will you tell me," said Mrs. F. confidentially, "if that young man is
engaged to Miss B.?" (The "young man," I might add, has a very charming
fiancee of his own), and how we all laughed when she came up with the
news!

The faithful "Wuzzy" had been confided to the care of a friend at the
Remount Camp, and I was delighted to get some snaps of him taken by a
Frenchman at Neuve-Chapelle--I felt my "idiot son" was certainly seeing
life! "In reply to your question" (said my friend in a letter), "as to
whether I have discovered Wuzzy's particular 'trait' yet, the answer as
far as I can make out appears to be 'chickens'!"

In time I began to get about on crutches, and the question next arose
where I was to go and convalesce, and the then strange, but now all too
familiar phrase was first heard. "If you were only a man, of course it
would be _so_ easy." As if it was _my_ fault I wasn't? It was no good
protesting I had always wished I had been one; it did not help matters
at all.

I came to the conclusion there were too many women in England. If I had
only been a Boche girl now I might at least have had several Donnington
Halls put at my disposal! I was finally sent to Brighton, and