pressive entrance of wrought-iron, a porter's lodge and a broad
driveway. At the back I found rows of little wood-huts. There was a
fragrance of log-fires burning. I was glad of that, for I had heard
of the starving cold these women had had to endure through the first
winter months of their tenure. On tapping at a door, I found the
entire colony assembled. It was tea-time and Sunday. Ten out of the
seventeen who form the colony were present. A box-stove, such as
we use in our pioneer shacks in Canada, was throwing out a glow of
cheeriness. Candles had been lighted. Little knicknacks of feminine
taste had been hung here and there to disguise the bareness of the
walls. A bed, in one corner, was carefully disguised as a couch.
Save for the fact that there was no glass in the window--glass
being unobtainable in France at present--one might easily have
persuaded himself that he was back in America in the room of a
girl-undergraduate.

The method of my greeting furthered this illusion. Americans, both
men and women, have an extraordinary self-poise, a gift for remaining
normal in the most abnormal surroundings. They refuse to allow
themselves to be surprised by any upheaval of circumstances. "I should
worry," they seem to be saying, and press straight on with the job
in hand. There was one small touch which made the environment seem
even more friendly and unexceptional. One of the girls, on being
introduced, promptly read to me a letter which she had just received
from my sister in America. It made this oasis in an encircling
wilderness seem very much a part of a neighbourly world. This girl is
an example of the varied experiences which have trained American women
into becoming the nursemaids of the French peasantry.

She was visiting relations in Liege when the war broke out. On the
Sunday she went for a walk on the embattlements and was turned back.
Baulked in this direction, she strolled out towards the country and
found men digging trenches. That was the first she knew that war was
rumoured. On the Tuesday, two days later, Hun shells were detonating
on the house-tops. She was held prisoner in Liege for some months
after the Forts had fallen and saw more than all the crimes against
humanity that the Bryce Report has recorded. At last she disguised
herself and contrived her escape into Holland. From there she worked
her way back to America and now she is at Grecourt, starting shops in
the villages, educating the children,