orn through the day, wearing the same two shirts for four months, no
pajamas, no sheets, with spots of grease and blood on all the costume, I
had a longing for frivolous things, such as a pink tea gown. Old
slippers and a bath and shampoo seemed good. I had a wholesome delight
in a modest clean blouse and in buying a new frock.

I returned to Pervyse. The Germans changed their range: an evening, a
morning and an afternoon--three separate bombardments with heavy
shells. The wounded were brought in. Nearly every one died. We piled
them together, anywhere that they wouldn't be tripped over. To the back
kitchen we carried the bodies of two boys. One of the orderlies knew
them. He went in with us to remove the trinkets from their necks. Every
now and then, he went back again, to look at them. They were very
beautiful, young, healthy, lying there together in the back kitchen. It
was a quiet half hour for us, after luncheon. The doctors and nurses
were reading or smoking. I was writing a letter.

A shell drove itself through the back kitchen wall and exploded over the
dead boys, bringing rafters and splintered glass and bricks down on
them. My pencil slid diagonally across the sheet, and I got up. Our two
orderlies and three soldiers rushed in, holding their eyes from the blue
fumes of the explosion. When one shell comes, the chances are that it
will be followed by three more, aimed at the same place. It had always
been my philosophy that it is better to be "pinked" in the house than on
the road, but not on this particular day. An army ambulance was standing
opposite our door, with its nose turned toward the trenches. The
Belgian driver rushed for the door, slammed it shut because of the
shells, opened it again. He ran to the car, cranked it, turned it
around. We stood in the doorway and waited, watching the shells dropping
with a wail, tearing up the road here, then there. After that we moved
back to La Panne.

[Illustration: POSTCARDS SKETCHED AND BLOCKED BY A BELGIAN WORKMAN, A.
VAN DOORNE.

Belgium suffering, but united, is the idea he brings out in his work.]

There I stayed on with Miss Georgie Fyfe, who is doing such excellent
work among the Belgian refugees. She is chief of the evacuation of
civilians who still remain in the bombarded villages and farms. She
brings the old and the sick and the children out of shell fire and finds
them safe homes. To the Refugee House she takes the little ones to be
cared for till