services as a
V.A.D. Three months later she was working as a pantry-maid in a
private hospital. Her work was very hard and deadly dull, but she had
been promised that after working for a time as pantry-maid, she should
be allowed to help in the wards. When Freddy left for the Front she
was able to say good-bye during her "two hours off."

Fresh air and sunshine, after the dark basement-pantry in which she
worked, seemed to her sufficient enjoyment and all the pleasure she
wanted. She seldom did anything in these hours but sit on a bench in
the garden-square near her hospital and rest her tired feet. For the
first month they were so swollen that she could not get on her walking
shoes. By four o'clock she was back in her pantry again, setting out
cups and saucers on little trays and laying the tea for the staff. Her
work was lonely and unrecognized.

After she had washed up and put away the cups which had been used for
afternoon tea and also the cups which had been used for the last meal
of the day, which was served at seven o'clock in the wards, she went
home to her quiet room, in a house on the other side of the square. It
was an old house, which had known better days. The locality always
carried Margaret's mind back to the gay world into whose society Becky
Sharp so persistently pushed her way.

If Margaret was not happy, she was far too busy to be unhappy. She
had, except for those two afternoon hours of rest, no time to think;
and as thoughts make our heaven or our hell, Margaret lived in an
intermediate state, for she had none. Her physical tiredness dominated
all other sensations.

The war dominated her life; it drilled her, and drove her, and exacted
the last fraction of her endurance and courage. It chased personal
things away into the dim background of her life. When she thought of
the Valley and her experiences there, it was as if she was visualizing,
not her own past life, but some story which she had read and remembered
with the sharp, clear memory, which never leaves us, of our childhood's
days.

With Margaret, as with most people, the war opened up a completely new
phase of mental as well as physical experiences. Nor could her
thoughts ever be the same again. Margaret's phase resembled the state
of a patient gradually recovering from a serious illness, an illness in
which she has faced the true proportions of the things belonging to
this life, and the triviality of human tragedies as t