It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had
distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names
sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.
October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense,
vibrating time.

Nothing for it but to wait and wait. The summons might come any minute.
Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the
ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.
Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves
in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in
front of the Hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their
balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields
southeast of the city. The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness
of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The
incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of
Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and
Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his
return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs.
Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling
everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would
move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and
pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. And in the evening, after
dinner, the discussion went on and on in John's bedroom. He raged against
his infernal luck. If they thought he was going to take it lying down--

"McClane can keep me out of my messroom, but he can't keep me out of my
job. There's room in 'the line of fire' for both of us."

"How are you going to get into it?" said Sutton.