dog, come out of that! Here's your
place!" and I disgracefully subsided with many blushes, and had to endure
all the way up to Melbourne the whispers and concentrated gaze of the
whole tramful. I also "fell in" in another way, for when I rang up my
uncle I found that he and his daughter were looking for me down at the
wharf gates.

Two years ago the site of Caulfield Hospital was a wilderness of weeds
and sand. Now it is an area of trim lawns and blazing gardens,
bowling-greens, croquet-lawns, and tennis-courts, with comfortable huts,
the gift of the people of Melbourne to their wounded soldiers, costing
several hundred thousand dollars. As I had served with Victorian troops
I was assigned to this hospital, although my home was over a thousand
miles away in the northern state of Queensland. All who were fit to
travel were given fourteen days "disembarkation leave" to visit their
homes, but twelve of these days I had to spend in travel and only had two
days at home after such long absence.

My wounds had healed but I was still paralyzed in my left leg, and the
only attention I required was daily massage for an hour, and then another
hour in the torture-chamber with an electric current grilling me. After
this was over, I would go into the city, do the block, have afternoon
tea, give an address at the Town Hall recruiting-depot, go to a theatre,
and then as there seemed nothing else to be done, would return to the
hospital. Such was my programme for ninety days. Sometimes I varied it
by visiting the Zoo to commiserate with the wild animals on being caged.

There were many red-letter days when I was entertained by friends; but I
am afraid I only squeaked when they expected roars--to be lionized was
too unusual not to have stage fright a little.

The women in Australia are well organized and see to it that if a boy has
a dull time it's his own fault. All the automobiles of the city were
registered with the Volunteer Motor Corps, and each day certain of them
were allotted to take wounded soldiers for picnics. We would generally
be driven to some pretty suburb and there would be spread before us a
feast of good things. At the end of the meal some of us felt like the
little boy who said to his mother after the party: "I'm so tired, mummie,
carry me up-stairs to bed, but don't bend me!"

There were concerts every night for the stay-at-home, but I only managed
to get to one, given by the pupils of Madam Melba, whi