which was now in flood, and reached from the road by a narrow wooden
bridge, stood a tarred hut of wood and tarpaulin. It was built upon
simple lines. A narrow corridor ran down the centre of it, and on either
hand were four square cells divided one from the other by grey paper
stretched upon laths of wood--making eight in all. At one end was a
small hall filled with mackintoshes. At the other a sitting-room.

This was the home of the women drivers attached to the garage. In one
of these paper cells, henceforward to be her own, Fanny set up her
intimate life.

* * * * *

Outside the black hut the jet-black night poured water down. Inside, the
eight cubicles held each a woman, a bed, and a hurricane lantern. Fanny,
in her paper box, listened to the scratching of a pen next door, then
turned her eyes as a new and nearer scratching caught her ear. A
bright-eyed rat stared at her through the hole it had made in the wall.

"Food is in!"

Out of the boxes came the eight women to eat pieces of dark meat from a
tin set on the top of the sitting-room stove--then cheese and bread. The
watery night turned into sleet and rattled like tin-foil on the panes.

"Where is Stewart?"

"She is not back yet."

Soon the eight crept back to their boxes and sat again by the lamps to