front and the still higher one behind, not to mention the excessive
slipperiness of the surface. His favourite pastime on the return ride
was to play follow my leader up and down the sand dunes, and it was his
great delight to go streaking up the very highest, with the sand
crumbling and slipping behind him, and we perforce had to follow and lie
almost flat on the horse's backs as we descended the "precipice" the
other side. We felt English honour was at stake and with our hearts in
our mouths (at least mine was!) followed at all costs.

If we were off duty in the evening we hurried back to the "shop window"
buying eggs _en route_ and anything else we fancied for supper; then we
undressed hastily and thoroughly enjoyed our picnic meal instead of
having it in the hospital kitchen, with the sanded floor and the medley
of Belgian cooks in the background and the banging of saucepans as an
accompaniment. Two of the girls kept their billet off the Grand Place as
a permanency. It was in a funny old-fashioned house in a dark street
known universally as "the dug-out"--Madame was fat and capable, with a
large heart. The French people at first were rather at a loss to place
the English "Mees" socially and one day two of us looked in to ask
Madame's advice on how to cook something. She turned to us in
astonishment. "How now, you know not how to cook a thing simple as that?
Who then makes the 'cuisine' for you at home? Surely not Madame your
mother when there are young girls such as you in the house?" We gazed
at her dumbly while she sniffed in disgust. "Such a thing is unheard of
in my country," she continued wrathfully. "I wonder you have not shame
at your age to confess such ignorance"--"What _would_ she say," said my
friend to me when she had gone, "if I told her we have _two_ cooks at
home?"

This house of Madame's was built in such a way that some of the bedrooms