gh: if ever.

Jean also is to rejoin his regiment.

Marie, the _bonne_, stands at the door of the service room and watches
us with frightened eyes. She follows me into the mess-room and shuts the
door. The poor thing has been seized with panic, and her one idea is to
get away from Ghent. Can I find a place for her on one of our ambulance
cars? She will squeeze in anywhere, she will stand outside on the step.
Will I take her back to England? She will do any sort of work, no matter
what, and she won't ask for wages if only I will take her there. I tell
her we are not going to England. We are going to Bruges. We have to
follow the Belgian Army wherever it is sent.

Then will I take her to Bruges? She has a mother there.

It is ghastly. I have to tell her that it is impossible; that there will
be no place for her in the ambulance cars, that they will be crammed
with wounded, that we will have to stand on the steps ourselves, that I
do not know how many we shall have to take from the Convent, or how many
from the hospitals; that I can do nothing without the Commandant's
orders, and that the Commandant is not here. And she pleads and
implores. She cannot believe that we can be so cruel, and I find my
voice growing hard and stern with sheer, wrenching pity. At last I tell
her that if there is room I will see what can be done, but that I am
afraid that there will not be room. She stays, she clings, trying to
extort through pity a more certain promise, and I have to tell her to
go. She goes, looking at me with the dull resentment of a helpless
creature whom I have hurt. The fact that she has left me sick with pity
will not do her any good. Nothing can do her any good but that place on
the ambulance which I have no power to give her.

For Marie is not the only one.

I see all the servants in the "Flandria" coming to me before the night
is over, and clinging and pleading for a place in the ambulance cars.

And this is only the beginning. After Marie comes Janet McNeil. She,
poor child, has surrendered to the overpowering assault on her feelings
and has pledged herself to smuggle the four young children of Madame
---- into the ambulance somehow. I don't see how it was possible for her
to endure the agony of refusing this request. But what we are to do with
four young children in cars packed with wounded soldiers, through all
the stages of the Belgian Army's retreat--!

The next problem that faced me was the Commandant's pac