er saw him really downcast was when
he came to bid good-bye. "What, Pierre," said I, "you don't mean to say
you are leaving us?" "Yes, Miske, for punishment--I will explain how it
arrived. Look you, to give pleasure to my young lady I took her for a
joy-ride, a very little one, on the coffin cart, and on returning behold
we were caught, _voila_, and now I go to the trenches!" I could not help
laughing, he looked so downcast, and the idea of his best girl enjoying
a ride in that lugubrious car struck me as being the funniest thing I
had heard for some time.

We were a never-failing source of wonderment to the French inhabitants
of the town. Our manly Yeomanry uniform filled them with awe and
admiration. I overheard a chemist saying to one of his clients as we
were passing out of his shop, "Truly, until one hears their voices, one
would say they were men."

"There's a compliment for us," said I, to Struttie. "I didn't know we
had manly faces until this moment."

After some time when work was not at such a high pressure, two of us
went out riding in turns on the sands with one of the Commandants.
Belgian military saddles took some getting used to with the peak in
front and the still higher one behind, not to mention the excessive
slipperiness of the surface. His favourite pastime on the return ride
was to play follow my leader up and down the sand dunes, and it was his
great delight to go streaking up the very highest, with the sand
crumbling and slipping behind him, and we perforce had to follow and lie
almost flat on the horse's backs as we descended the "precipice" the
other side. We felt English honour was at stake and with our hearts in
our mouths (at least mine was!) followed at all costs.

If we were off duty in the evening we hurried back to the "shop window"
buying eggs _en route_ and anything else we fancied for supper; then we
undressed hastily and thoroughly enjoyed our picnic meal instead of
having it in the hospital kitchen, with the sanded floor and the medley
of Belgian cooks in the background and the banging of saucepans as an
accompaniment. Two of the girls kept their billet off the Grand Place as
a permanency. It was in a funny old-fashioned house in a dark street
known universally as "the dug-out"--Madame was fat and capable, with a
large heart. The French people at first were rather at a loss to place
the English "Mees" socially and one day two of us looked in to ask
Madame's advice on how to cook