grate fire in the smoking-room. A club-member caught sight of the ribbon in the coat-lapel. "I say, Eleanor," she said eagerly, coming over to examine it.
Miss Warrender was home on leave. In a few days she would be returning again to her unit in France. She has been living where one does not get a bath every day and there are not always clean sheets. One sleeps on the floor if necessary, and what water there is available sometimes must be carefully saved for dying men to drink. The Red Cross flag that floats over the hospital is of no protection whatever. Sometimes it seems only a menace, as if it were a sign to indicate to the enemy where they may drop bombs on the most helpless.
There is a slight soft patter at the window-pane and it isn't rain. It's shrapnel. The warning whistle has just sounded. There is the cry in the streets—"Gardez vous!" The taubes are here. A Zeppelin bomb explodes on contact, so you seek safety in the cellar, which it may not reach. But a taube bomb, small and pointed, pierces a floor and explodes at the lowest level reached. So you may not flee from a taube bomb to anywhere. You just stay with your wounded and wait. Ah, there is the explosion which makes the cots here in the ward rock and the men shake as with palsy and turn pale. But, thank God, this time the explosion is outside and in the garden. Beyond the window there, what was a flower-bed three minutes ago is an upturned heap of earth and stone. They are bringing in now
