The sister in charge was a true daughter of the “Lady of the Lamp.”  Provided they are really ill, she sympathises with all the grumblers, but scolds them if they have reached the convalescent stage.  She carries a small book in which she enters imaginary good points to those who have the tables by their beds tidy, and she pinned an invisible medal on the chest of a convalescent who was helping to carry trays of food to his comrades.  She is indeed a General, saving men for France.

Not a man escaped her attention, and as we passed through the tents she gave to each of her “chers enfants,” black or white, a cheering smile or a kindly word.  She did, however, whilst talking to us, omit to salute a Senegalais.  Before she passed out of the tent he commenced to call after her, “Toi pas gentille aujourd’hui, moi battre toi.” (You are not good to me to-day; me beat you.) This, it appears, is his little joke—­he will never beat any one again, since he lost both his arms when his trench was blown up by a land mine.

It was at Triancourt that I first saw in operation the motor-cars that had been sent out fitted with bath tubs for the troops, and also a very fine car fitted up by the London Committee of the French Red Cross as a moving dental hospital.

I regret to add that a “Poilu” near by disrespectfully referred to it as “another of the horrors of war,” adding that in times of peace there was some kind of personal liberty, whereas now “a man could not have toothache without being forced to have it ended, and that there was no possibility of escaping a dentist who hunted you down by motor.”

It was suggested that as I had had a touch of toothache the night before, I might take my place in the chair and give an example of British pluck to the assembled “Poilus.”  I hastened to impress on the surgeon that I hated notoriety and would prefer to remain modestly in the background.  I even pushed aside with scorn the proffered bribe of six “Boche,” buttons, assuring the man that “I would keep my toothache as a souvenir.”

At one of the hospitals beside the bed of a dying man sat a little old man writing letters.  They told me that before the war he had owned the most flourishing wine shop in the village.  He had fled before the approach of the German troops, but later returned to his village and installed himself in the hospital as scribe.  He wrote from morning until night, and, watching him stretching his lean old hands, I asked him if he suffered much pain from writers’ cramp.  He looked at me almost reproachfully before answering, “Mademoiselle, it is the least I can do for my country; besides my pain is so slight and that of the comrades so great.  I am proud, indeed proud, that at sixty-seven years of age I am not useless.”

I was shown a copy of the last letter dictated by a young French officer, and I asked to be allowed to copy it—­it was indeed a letter of a “chic” type.

Chers Parrain et Marraine,