"Fierce by name and fierce by nature," I said, as the door closed. "I wonder sometimes if those women spend all their time rushing from bed to bed asking the men to describe all they've been through—I feel like writing to John Bull about it," I added, "but I don't believe the average person would believe it. Tact seems to be a word unknown in some vocabularies." The cream of the whole thing was that, not content with the information she had gleaned, when she got downstairs, she asked to see my nurse. The poor thing was having tea at the time, but went running down in case it was something important.

"Will you tell me," said Mrs. F. confidentially, "if that young man is engaged to Miss B.?" (The "young man," I might add, has a very charming fiancée of his own), and how we all laughed when she came up with the news!

The faithful "Wuzzy" had been confided to the care of a friend at the Remount Camp, and I was delighted to get some snaps of him taken by a Frenchman at Neuve-Chapelle—I felt my "idiot son" was certainly seeing life! "In reply to your question" (said my friend in a letter), "as to whether I have discovered Wuzzy's particular 'trait' yet, the answer as far as I can make out appears to be 'chickens'!"

In time I began to get about on crutches, and the question next arose where I was to go and convalesce, and the then strange, but now all too familiar phrase was first heard. "If you were only a man, of course it would be so easy." As if it was my fault I wasn't? It was no good protesting I had always wished I had been one; it did not help matters at all.

I came to the conclusion there were too many women in England. If I had only been a Boche girl now I might at least have had several Donnington Halls put at my disposal! I was finally sent to Brighton, and thanks to Lady Dudley's kindness, became an out-patient of one of her officers' hospitals, but even then it was a nuisance being a girl. Another disadvantage was that all the people treated me as if I was a strange animal from the Zoo; men on crutches had become unfortunately a too familiar sight, but a F.A.N.Y. was something quite new, and therefore an object to be stared at. Some days I felt quite brazen, but others I went out for about five minutes and returned, refusing to move for the rest of the day. It would have been quite different if several F.A.N.Y.s had been in a similar plight, but alone, one gets tired of being gaped at as a rara avis.

The race meetings were welcome events and great sport, to which we all went with gusto. I fell down one day on the Parade, getting into my bath chair. It gave me quite a jar, but it must be got over some time as a lesson, for of course I put out the leg that wasn't there and went smack on the asphalt! One learns in time to remember these details.

It was ripping to see friends from France who ran down for the day, and when the F.A.N.Y.s came over, how eagerly I listened to all the news! The lines from one of our songs often rang through my brain:

"On the sandy shores of France
Looking Blighty-wards to sea,
There's a little camp a-sitting
And it's all the world to me—
For the cars are gently humming,
And the 'phone bell's ringing yet,
Come up, you British Convoy,
Come ye up to Fontinettes—
On the road to Fontinettes
Where the trains have to be met;
Can't you hear the cars a-chunking
Through the Rue to Fontinettes?
"On the road to Fontinettes
Where the stretcher-bearers sweat,
And the cars come up in convoy,
From the camp to Fontinettes.
"For 'er uniform is khaki,
And 'er little car is green,
And 'er name is onlyFanny
(And she's not exactly clean!)
And I see'd 'er first a'smoking
Of a ration cigarette.
And a'wasting army petrol
Cleaning clothes, 'cos she's in debt."
On the road to Fontinettes, etc.

I longed to be back so much sometimes that it amounted almost to an ache! This, and the fact of being the only one, I feel sure partly accounted for it that I became ill. According to the doctor I ought to have been in a proper hospital, and then once again the difficulty arose of finding one to go to. Boards and committees sat on me figuratively and almost literally, too, but could come to no conclusion. Though I could be in a military hospital in France it was somehow not to be thought of in England. Finally I heard a W.A.A.C.'s ward had been opened in London at a military hospital run by women doctors for Tommies, and I promptly sat down and applied for admittance. Yes, I could go there, and so at the end of November, I found myself once more back in London. I was in a little room—a W.A.A.C. officers' ward, on the same floor as the medical ward for W.A.A.C. privates. I met them at the concerts that were often given in the recreation room, and they were extremely kind to me. I was amused to hear them discussing their length of active service. One who could boast of six months was decidedly the nut of the party! We had a great many air raids, and were made to go down to the ground floor, which annoyed me intensely. I hated turning out, apart from the cold; it seemed to be giving in to the Boche to a certain extent.

I loved my charlady. She was the nearest approach to the cheery orderlies of those far away days in France, I had struck since I came over. Her smiling face, as she appeared at the door every morning with broom and coalscuttle, was a tonic in itself. I used to keep her talking just as long as I could—she was so exceedingly alive.