press's bodyguard, and
waited for a few minutes in the throne room downstairs, chatting to him.
Soon we were summoned upstairs, a door was thrown open by an enormous
negro in scarlet livery, and we were ushered into the Empress's private
boudoir. The Empress was there, and was absolutely charming to us,
making us sit down beside her and talking to us in fluent English. She
was so interested in hearing all we could tell her of Belgium, and we
stayed about half an hour talking to her. Then the Empress rose and held
out her hand, and said, "Thank you very much for coming to help us in
Russia. I shall always be interested in hearing about you. May God bless
you in your work," and we were dismissed.

I would not have missed that for anything, it seemed such a nice start
to our work in Russia.

Every spare moment till our work began had to be devoted to learning
Russian. It is a brain-splitting language. Before I went to Russia I was
told that two words would carry me through the Empire: "Nichevo" meaning
"never mind," and "Seechas" which means "immediately" or "to-morrow" or
"next week." But we had to study every moment to learn as much Russian
as possible, as of course the soldiers could not understand any other
language. French is understood everywhere in society, but in the shops
no other tongue than Russian is any use. German is understood pretty
widely--but it is absolutely forbidden now to be spoken under penalty of
a 3000 rouble fine. In all the hotels there is a big notice put up in
Russian, French, and English in the public rooms "It is forbidden to
speak German," and just at first it added rather to the complications of
life not to be able to use it.

VII

OUR WORK IN WARSAW

In two or three days' time after our visit to the Empress we were off to
Warsaw and reported ourselves to Monsieur Goochkoff, the head of the Red
Cross Society there.

We received our marching orders at once. We were not to be together at
first, as they thought we should learn Russian more quickly if we were
separated, so two of us were to go to one hospital in Warsaw, two to
another. My fate was a large Red Cross hospital close to the station,
worked by a Community of Russian Sisters. I must say I had some anxious
moments as I drove with Sister G. to the hospital that afternoon. I
wondered if Monsieur Goochkoff had said we were coming, and thought if
two Russian Sisters suddenly turned up without notice at an English
hospital