are at present employed?"

"I don't _quite_ see what that's got to do with it," said Nurse
Smaith, still gaining ground.

"Certainly not. Nothing. Nothing at all. I was only hoping that these
visits here are not inconvenient to you."

"Well, as it seems so important, I _my_ sy I'm going out to Salonika
next week, and that's why I want this business settled." She stopped,
and as the committee remained diffidently and apprehensively silent,
she went on: "It isn't as if I was the only one. Why! When we were in
the retreat of the Serbian Army owver the mahntains I came across
by chance, if you call it chance, another nurse that knew all about
_her_--been under her in Bristol for a year."

A young member, pricking up, asked:

"Were you in the Serbian retreat, Nurse?"

"If I hadn't been I shouldn't be here now," said Nurse Smaith,
entirely recovered from her stage-fright and entirely pleased to be
there then. "I lost all I had at Ypek. All I took was my medals, and
them I did take. There were fifty of us, British, French and Russians.
We had nearly three weeks in the mahntains. We slept rough all
together in one room, when there was a room, and when there wasn't we
slept in stables. We had nothing but black bread, and that froze in
the haversacks, and if we took our boots off we had to thaw them
the next morning before we could put them on. If we hadn't had three
saucepans we should have died. When we went dahn the hills two of
us had to hold every horse by his head and tail to keep them from
falling. However, nearly all the horses died, and then we took the
packs off them and tried to drag the packs along by hand; but we soon
stopped that. All the bridle-paths were littered with dead horses and
oxen. And when we came up with the Serbian Army we saw soldiers just
drop down and die in the snow. I read in the paper there were no
children in the retreat, but I saw lots of children, strapped to their
mother's backs. Yes; and they fell down together and froze to death.
Then we got to Scutari, and glad I was."

She glanced round defiantly, but not otherwise moved, at the
committee, the hitherto invisible gods of hospitals and medical units.
The nipping wind of reality had blown into the back drawing-room. The
committee was daunted. But some of its members, less daunted than the
rest, had the presence of mind to wonder why it seemed strange and
strangely chilling that a rather coarse, stout woman with a cockney
accent and l