oking down into the hole, watching the proceedings. Where he'd
come from I don't know. "Call those 'ands?" he asked. "'Ere, give it to
me"--indicating the axe. "I guess y'aint chopped many sticks, 'ave yer?"
"No," I said; "and I'm terrified of the thing!" I sat on the steps and
watched him deftly slicing the wood into thin slips. "This is a
fatigue," I said, by way of an explanation. That tickled him! He stopped
and chuckled, "You do fatigues just the same as we do?" he asked. "I
never heard anything to beat that. Well I never, wot's the crime, I
wonder? Look 'ere," he added, "I'll chop you enough to last fatigues for
a month, and you put 'em somewhere in the meantime," and in ten
minutes, mark you, there was a pile that rejoiced my heart. He was a
"Bird," that man, and no mistake.

After brekker was over the first thing that had to be done before
anything else was to get one's 'bus running and in order for the day.
Once that was done we could do our huts, provided no jobs had come in;
and when that was done the engine had to be thoroughly cleaned, and then
the car. I might add that this is an ideal account of the proceedings
for, as often as not, we went out the minute the cars were started.
Three days elapsed sometimes before the hut could have a "turn out." On
these occasions one just rolled into one's bed at night unmade and
unturned, too tired to care one way or the other.

Some of the girls got a Frenchwoman, "Alice" by name, to do their "cues"
for them. She used to bring her small baby with her and dump him down
anywhere in the corridor, sometimes in a waste paper basket, till she
was done. One morning he howled bitterly for about an hour, and at last
I went out to see what could be the matter. "Oh, Mees, it is that he has
burnt himself against the stove, the careless one" (he couldn't walk, so
it must have been her own fault). "I took him to a _Pharmacie_ but he
has done nothing but cry ever since."

Now I had fixed up a small _Pharmacie_ in one of the empty "cues,"
complete with sterilised dressings and rows of bottles, and bandaged up
whatever cuts and hurts there were, in fact my only sorrow was there
were not more "cases." Considering the many men we had had at Lamarck
burnt practically all over from fire-bombs, I suggested that she should
bring the baby into the _Pharmacie_ and see if I could do anything for
it. She was quite willing, and carried it in, when I undid the little
arm (only about six inches l