dry and carry back the quickest. You contend with
brawny Flemish women for the first dip into the tub and the driest
towel. Then you race round the tables with your pile of crockery, and
then with your jug, and so on over and over again for three hours, till
the last relay is fed and the tables are deserted. You wash up again and
it is all over for you till six o'clock to-morrow evening.

You go back to your mess-room and a ten-o'clock supper of cold coffee
and sandwiches and Belgian current loaf eaten with butter. And in a
nightmare afterwards Belgian refugees gather round you and pluck at your
sleeve and cry to you for more bread: "_Une petite tranche de pain, s'il
vous plait, mademoiselle!_"

[_Wednesday, 30th._]

No Germans, nor sign of Germans yet.

Fighting is reported at Saint Nicolas, between Antwerp and Ghent. The
Commandant has an idea. He says that if the Belgian Army has to meet the
Germans at Saint Nicolas, so as to cut off their advance on Antwerp, the
base hospital must be removed from Ghent to some centre or point which
will bring the Ambulance behind the Belgian lines. He thinks that
working from Ghent would necessarily bring it behind the German lines.
This is assuming that the Germans coming up from the south-east will cut
in between Saint Nicolas and Ghent.

He consults the President, who apparently thinks that the base hospital
will do very well where it is.

[_2.30._]

Mrs. Torrence brought her Colonel in to lunch. He is battered and
grizzled, but still a fine figure in the dark-green uniform of the Motor
Cyclist Corps. He is very polite and gallant _a la belge_ and vows that
he has taken on Mrs. Torrence _pour toujours, pour la vie_! She diverts
the flow of urbanity adroitly.

Except the Colonel nothing noteworthy seems to have occurred to-day. The
three hours at the Palais des Fetes were like the three hours last
night.

[_Thursday, October 1st._]

It really isn't safe for the Commandant to go out with Ursula Dearmer.
For her luck in the matter of bombardments continues. (He might just as
well be with Mrs. Torrence.) They have been at Termonde. What is more,
it was Ursula Dearmer who got them through, in spite of the medical
military officer whose vigorous efforts stopped them at the barrier. He
seems at one point to have shown weakness and given them leave to go on
a little way up the road; and the little way seems to have carried them
out of his sight and onward till they en