people who wouldn't look at her; she smiled foolishly; too stupid to know
that the Flandria was no longer an hotel but a military hospital.

John came out of the President's bureau. He looked disgusted and
depressed.

"They can put us up," he said; "but I've got to break it to you that
we're not the only Field Ambulance in Ghent."

Charlotte said, "Oh, well, we'd no business to suppose we were."

"We've got to share our quarters with the other one.... It calls itself
the McClane Corps."

"Shall we have to sleep with it?" Sutton said.

"We shall have to have it in our messroom. I believe it's up there now."

"Well, that won't hurt us."

"What'll hurt us is this. It'll be sent out before we are. McClane was
here hours ago. He's been to Head Quarters."

Sutton's gloom deepened. "How do you know?"

"President says so."

They went, following the matron, up the grey, tessellated stairs; at each
landing the long, grey corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange
smells, ether and iodine and carbolic and the faint odour of drains,