rge of the domesticity department
interviewed the mayor, cajoled the corporation, and inspected
convents down side streets. She came back at last with a little
hopelessness in her eyes.

"Goodness knows where we can go! There doesn't seem room for a
mouse in Poperinghe, and meanwhile the poor nurses are dying of
hunger. We must get into some kind of shelter."

I was commissioned to find at least a temporary abode and to search
around for food; not at all an easy task in a dark town where I had
never been before and crowded with the troops of three nations. I
was also made the shepherd of all these sheep, who were
commanded to keep their eyes upon me and not to go astray but to
follow where I led. It was a most ridiculous position for a London
journalist of a shy and retiring nature, especially as some of the
nurses were getting out of hand and indulging in private adventures.
One of them, a most buxom and jolly soul, who, as she confided to
me, "didn't care a damn," had established friendly relations with a
naval lieutenant, and I had great trouble in dragging her away from
his engaging conversation. Others had discovered a shop where hot
coffee was being served to British soldiers who were willing to share it
with attractive ladies. A pretty shepherd I looked when half my flock
had gone astray!

Then one of the chauffeurs had something like an apoplectic stroke in
the street--the effect of a nervous crisis after a day under shell-fire--
and with two friendly "Tommies" I helped to drag him into the Town
Hall. He was a very stout young man, with well-developed muscles,
and having lain for some time in a state of coma, he suddenly
became delirious and tried to fight me. I disposed of him in a
backyard, where he gradually recovered, and then I set out again in
search of my sheep. After scouting about Poperinghe in the
darkness, I discovered a beer tavern with a fair-sized room in which
the party might be packed with care, and then, like a pocket patriarch
with the children of Israel, I led my ladies on foot to the place of
sanctuary and disposed the nuns round the bar, with the reverend
mother in the centre of them, having a little aureole round her head
from the glamour of the pewter pots. The others crowded in anyhow
and said in a dreadful chorus, like Katherine in "The Taming of the
Shrew," "We want our supper!"

A brilliant inspiration came to me. As there were British troops in
Poperinghe, there must also be Bri