denly I came round a corner on an
orderly full of such definite information as:

"There's thirty officers, nurse; an 'undred an' eighty men."

I flew back to the bunk with the news, and we sat down to our tea
wondering and discussing how many each ward would get.

Presently the haughty Sister from downstairs came to the door: she held
her thin, white face high, and her rimless glasses gleamed, as she
remarked, overcasually, after asking for a hot-water bottle that had
been loaned to us:

"Have you many beds?"

"Have they many beds?" The one question that starts up among the
competing wards.

And, "I don't want any; I've enough to do as it is!" is the false,
cloaking answer that each Sister gives to the other.

But my Sisters are frank women; they laughed at my
excitement--themselves not unstirred. It's so long since we've had a
convoy.

The gallants of the ward showed annoyance. New men, new interests....
They drew together and played bridge.

A little flying boy with bright eyes said in his high, piping voice to
me across the ward:

"So there are soldiers coming into the ward to-night!"

I paused, struck by his accusing eyes.

"What do you mean? Soldiers...?"

"I mean men who have been to the front, nurse."

The gallants raised their eyebrows and grew uproarious.

The gallants have been saying unprofessional things to me, and I haven't
minded. The convoy will arm me against them. "Soldiers are coming into
the ward."

Eight o'clock, nine o'clock.... If only one could eat something! I took
a sponge-finger out of a tin, resolving to pay it back out of my tea
next day, and stole round to the dark corner near the German ward to eat
it. The Germans were in bed; I could see two of them. At last, freed
from their uniform, the dark blue with the scarlet soup-plates, they
looked--how strange!--like other men.

One was asleep. The other, I met his eyes so close; but I was in the
dark, and he under the light of a lamp.

I knew what was happening down at the station two miles away; I had been
on station duty so often. The rickety country station lit by one large
lamp; the thirteen waiting V.A.D.'s; the long wooden table loaded with
mugs of every size; kettles boiling; the white clock ticking on; that
frowsy booking clerk....

Then the sharp bell, the tramp of the stretcher-bearers through the
station, and at last the two engines drawing gravely across the lighted
doorway, and carriage windows filled