"It's on the stove."
"Is it eatable?"
"No."
Silence for a while, and then one by one they crept out into the black mud beyond the hut to fill their cans with hot water from the cook-house—and so to bed, on stretchers slung on trestles, where those who did not sleep listened through the long night to those who slept too well.
"Are you awake?" came with the daylight. "Ah, you are washing! You are doing your hair!" There was no privacy.
"How cold, how cold the water, is!…" sighed Fanny, And a voice through the paper wall, catching the shivering whisper, exclaimed: "Use your hot-water bottle!"
"What for?"
"Empty it into your basin. If you have kept it in your bed all night you will find the water has the chill off."
Those who had to be out early had left before the daylight, still with their lanterns swinging in their hands; had battled with the cold cars in the unlighted garage, and were moving alone across the long desert of the battlefields.
On the first morning she was tested on an old ambulance, and passed the test. On the second morning she got her first run upon a Charron car that had been assigned to her.