competition for everyone else's tools, brooms, dusters, etc. Great
roaming about. All mean well.

_25 September._--Forty wounded men were brought into our hospital
yesterday. Fortunately we had everything ready, but it took a bit of
doing. We are all dead tired, and not so keen as we were about doing
other people's work.

The wounded are not very bad, and have been sent on here from another
hospital. They are enchanted with their quarters, which indeed do look
uncommonly nice. One hundred and thirty beds are ranged in rows, and we
have a bright counterpane on each and clean sheets. The floor is
scrubbed, and the bathrooms, store, office, kitchens, and
receiving-rooms have been made out of nothing, and look splendid. I
never saw a hospital spring up like magic in this way before. There is a
wide verandah where the men play cards, and a garden to stump about in.

The gratitude of our patients is boundless, and they have presented Mrs.
Stobart with a beautiful basket of growing flowers. I do not think
Englishmen would have thought of such a thing. They say they never
tasted such cooking as ours outside Paris, and they are rioting in good
food, papers, nice beds, etc. Nearly all of them are able to get out a
little, so it is quite cheery nursing them. There is a lot to do, and we
all fly about in white caps. The keenest competition is for sweeping out
the ward with a long-handled hair brush!

[Page Heading: THE DEFENCES OF THE TOWN]

I went into the town to-day. It is very like every other foreign town,
with broad streets and tram-lines and shops and squares, but to-day I