breakfast I cleaned the two houses, as I do every morning, made nine
beds, swept floors and dusted stairs, etc. When my rooms were done and
jugs filled, our nice little cook gave me a cup of soup in the kitchen,
as she generally does, and I went over to the hospital to help prepare
the men's dinner, my task to-day being to open bottles and pour out beer
for a hundred and twenty men; then, when the meat was served, to procure
from the kitchen and serve out gravy. Our own dinner is at 12.30.

Afterwards I went across to the hospital again and arranged a few
things with Mrs. Stobart. I began to correct the men's diagnosis sheets,
but was called off to help with wounded arriving, and to label and sort
their clothes. Just then the British Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and
the Surgeon-General, Sir Cecil Herslet, came in to see the hospital, and
we proceeded to show them round, when the sound of firing began quite
close to us and we rushed out into the garden.

[Page Heading: A TAUBE OVERHEAD]

From out the blue, clear autumn sky came a great grey dove flying
serenely overhead. This was a German aeroplane of the class called the
Taube (dove). These aeroplanes are quite beautiful in design, and fly
with amazing rapidity. This one wafted over our hospital with all the
grace of a living creature "calm in the consciousness of wings," and
then, of course, we let fly at it. From all round us shells were sent up
into the vast blue of the sky, and still the grey dove went on in its
gentle-looking flight. Whoever was in it must have been a brave man! All
round him shells were flying--one touch and he must have dropped. The
smoke from the burst shells looked like little white clouds in the sky
as the dove sailed away into the blue again and was seen no more.