But here, beside the road, was an excavation. Had somebody started to dig a cellar—or a well—and abandoned it unfinished? It was right at the roadside.
A little farther on there were several similar holes in a row. The road circled around them through a field that had been plowed. Suddenly the nurse was thrilled by a thought.
"Oh!" she cried, "what are they?"
"Shell holes—craters," replied the ambulance driver. "This section was under fire a week ago."
CHAPTER X
BELINDA AT WORK
The directrice was just as positive and bustling a little Frenchwoman as Aunt Roberta. Belinda was quite sure she must have made an atrocious nurse, even in time of peace; but she possessed great executive ability and was inured to the work by long experience. It was "the job" to her, and "the job" only. If the wounded looked to her for pity rather than justice, they looked in vain.
"Don't let them bully you, these wounded," she instructed Belinda. "They will do it if you do not put your foot down firmly. It's their work to get back to the trenches as soon as possible—or be sent home. It's our job to get them back on the firing line as quickly as it can be done. Remember that."
"Ah!" breathed the queer little man who was infirmier of Salle III to which Belinda was assigned. "Madame la Directrice, her bark is much worse than her bite. Ma foi! one would think to hear her that her hand wore a steel gauntlet instead of being like velvet. Oui! Oui!"
He was a man with a twisted foot and a harelip, named Erard.