s.

Of course they asked me many questions about the future. Would we be
close to the Front? How many versts? Would there be plenty of work,
and would we _really_ see things? We wanted to be useful, no use going
if we were not to be useful. How many Sisters were there then already?
Were they "sympathetic"? Was Molozov, the head of the Otriad, an
agreeable man? Was he kind, or would he be angry about simply nothing?
Who would bandage and who would feed the villagers and who would bathe
the soldiers? Were the officers of the Ninth Army pleasant to us?
Where? Who? When? The day slipped away, the colours were drawn from
the sky, the fields, the hills, the stars came out in their myriads,
thickly clustered in ropes, and lakes and coils of light; the air was
scented with flowers. The second night passed.

The greater part of the next day was spent in H----, a snug town with
a little park like a clean handkerchief, streets with coloured shops,
neat and fresh-painted like toys from a toy-shop, little blue trains,
statues of bewigged eighteenth-century kings and dukes, and a
restaurant, painted Watteau-fashion with bright green groves, ladies
in hoops and powder, and long-legged sheep. Here we wandered, five of
us. Nikitin told us that he would meet us at the station that evening.
He had his own business in the place. The little town was delivered
over to the Russian army but seemed happy enough in its deliverance. I
have never realised in any place more completely the spirit of bright
cheerfulness, and the soldiers who thronged the little streets were as
far from alarm and thunder as the painted sheep in the restaurant.
Marie Ivanovna was as excited as though she had never been in a town
before. She bought a number of things in the little expensive
shops--eau-de-Cologne, sweets, an electric lamp, a wrist-watch, and
some preserved fruit. Trenchard made her presents; she thanked him
with a gratitude that made him so happy that he stumbled over his
sword more than ever, blushing and pushing his cap back from his head.
There are some who might have laughed at him, carrying her parcels,
his face flushed, his legs knocking against one another, but it was
here, at H----, that, for the first time, I positively began to like
him. By the evening when we were assembled in the station again as I
looked at him standing, waiting for directions, smiling, hot, untidy
and awkward, I knew that I liked him very much indeed....

Our new train o