less to say, I was only too pleased to let her carry on.

When I rolled in at night after washing up in the cook-house she would
say: "You must come out and tighten the tent ropes with this gale
blowing, it won't be funny if the whole thing blows over in the night."
But none of the horrors she depicted ever persuaded me to turn out once
I was safely tucked up in my "flea bag" with "Tuppence" acting as a
weight to keep the top blankets in place. In the morning when I awoke
after a sound night's sleep, I would exclaim triumphantly: "There you
are, 'Squig,' what price the tent blowing down? It's as safe as a rock
and hasn't moved an inch!"

"No?" the long-suffering "Squig" would reply bitterly, "it may interest
you to hear I've only been up _twice_ in the night hammering in the pegs
and fixing the ropes!"

The only time I didn't bless her manipulation of these things was when I
rose at 6.30 a.m., by which time they had been frozen stiff and shrunk
to boot. The ones lacing the flap leading out of the tent were as hard
to undo as if they had been made of iron. On these occasions "Tuppence,"
who had hardly realized the seriousness of war, would wake up and want
me instantly to go out, half dressed as I was, and throw stones for his
benefit! That dog had no sense of the fitness of things. If I did not
comply immediately he sat down, threw his head in the air, and "howled
to the moon!" The rest of the camp did not appreciate this pastime; but
if they had known my frenzied efforts with the stiffened ropes "Squig"
had so securely fixed over-night, their sympathies would have been with,
rather than against, me.

One night we had a fearful storm (at least "Squig" told me of it in the
morning and I had no reason to doubt her word), and just as I was
rolling out of bed we heard yells of anguish proceeding from one of the
other tents.

That one had collapsed we felt no doubt, and, rushing out in pyjamas
just as we were, in the wind and rain, we capered delightedly to the
scene of the disaster. The Sisters Mudie-Cooke (of course it would be
their tent that had gone) were now hidden from sight under the heavy
mass of wet canvas on top of them. The F.A.N.Y.s, their hair flying in
the wind, looking more like Red Indians on a scalping expedition than a
salvage party, soon extricated them, and they were taken, with what
clothes could be rescued, to another tent. Their fate, "Squig" assured
me, would have assuredly been ours had it not