"No place for a woman, is it?" laughed Hilda.
"Don't let me keep you," she added politely, "if you feel you must go."
"Listen," said the war-correspondent. About a stone's throw to their left, a wall was crumpling up.
Dr. McDonnell had slowly crawled down from his perch on the ambulance. His legs were stiff from the long ride, so he carefully shook them one after the other, and spoke pleasantly to a dog that was wandering about the Grand Place in a forlorn panic. Then he remembered why he had come to the place. There were wounded downstairs in the Town-hall.
"Come on, boys," he said to Tom and Smith, "bring one stretcher, and we'll clear the place out. Hilda, you stay by the cars. We shan't be but a minute."
They disappeared inside the battered building. Barkleigh walked up and down the Grand Place, felt of the machinery of each of the two ambulances, lit a cigarette, threw it away and chewed at an unlighted cigar.
"It's hot," he said; "this is hot."
"And yet you are shaking as if you were chilly," observed Hilda.