Miss, pick it up!" (one trails it at first). The fitter was a man
of most wonderful patience and absolutely untiring in his efforts to do
any little thing to ease the fitting. I often wonder he did not brain
his more fussy patients with their wooden legs and have done with it!

"Got your knee, Miss?" the men would call sometimes. "You're lucky."
When I saw men who had lost an arm and sometimes both legs, from above
the knee too, I realised just how lucky I was. They were all so
splendidly cheerful. I knew too well from my own experience what they
must have gone through; and again I could only pray that something good
would come out of all this untold suffering, and that these men would
not be forgotten by a grateful country when peace reigned once more.

I often watched them playing bowls on the lawn with a marvellous
dexterity--a one-armed man holding the chair steady for a double
amputation while the latter took his aim.

I remember seeing a man struggling painfully along with an
above-the-knee leg, obviously his first day out. A group of men watched
his efforts. "Pick it up, Charlie!" they called, "we'll race you to the
cedars!" but Charlie only smiled, not a bit offended, and patiently
continued along the terrace.

At last I was officially "passed out" by the surgeon, and after eighteen
months was free from hospitals. What a relief! No longer anyone to
reproach me because I wasn't a man! It was my great wish to go out to
the F.A.N.Y.s again when I had got thoroughly accustomed to my leg. I
tried riding a bicycle, and after falling off once or twice "coped"
quite well, but it was not till November that I had the chance to try a
horse. I was down at Broadstairs and soon discovered a job-master and
arranged to go out the next day. I hardly slept at all that night I was
so excited at the prospect. The horse I had was a grey, rather a
coincidence, and not at all unlike my beloved grey in France. Oh the joy
of being in a saddle again! A lugubrious individual with a bottle nose
(whom I promptly christened "Dundreary" because of his long whiskers)
came out with me. He was by way of being a riding master, but for all
the attention he paid I might have been alone.

I suggested finding a place for a canter after we had trotted some
distance and things felt all right. I was so excited to find I could
ride again with comparatively little inconvenience I could hardly
restrain myself from whooping aloud. I presently infected "