tury manners.

However, we had decided to live in the house, but as I crept back from
the wood, I determined to take a few elementary and common-sense
precautions. Hudson had returned when I got back, and together we
discussed the house, the position, and everything we could think of in
connection with the business, as we sat on the floor and had our midday
meal of bully beef and biscuits, rounded up by tea and plum and apple
jam spread neat from the tin on odd corners of broken biscuits. We
thoroughly talked over the question of possible fortifications and
precautions. I said, "What we really want is an emergency exit
somewhere, where we can stand a little chance, if they start to shell
us."

He agreed, and we both decided to pile up all the odd bricks, which were
lying outside at the back of the house, against the perforated wall, and
then sleep there in a little easier state of mind. We contented
ourselves with this little precaution to begin with, but later on, as we
lived in that house, we thought of larger and better ideas, and launched
out into all sorts of elaborate schemes, as I will show when the time
comes.

Anyway, for the first couple of sessions spent in that house in St.
Yvon, we were content with merely making ourselves bullet proof. The
whole day had to be spent with great caution indoors; any visit
elsewhere had to be conducted with still greater caution, as the one
great thing to be remembered was "Don't let 'em see we're in the
village." So we had long days, just lying around in the dirty old straw
and accumulated dirt of the cottage floor.

We both sat and talked and read a bit, sometimes slept, and through the
opening beneath the sack across the back door we watched the evenings
creeping on, and finally came the night, when we stole out like vampires
and went about our trench work. It was during these long, sad days that
my mind suddenly turned on making sketches. This period of my trench
life marked the start of _Fragments from France_, though it was not till
the end of February that a complete and presentable effort, suitable for
publication in a paper, emerged. It was nothing new to me to draw, as
for a very long time before the war I had drawn hundreds of sketches,
and had spent a great amount of time reading and learning about all
kinds of drawing and painting. I have always had an enormous interest in
Art; my room at home will prove that to anyone. Stacks of bygone efforts
of mine will a