Then my leg jumped and it began to dawn on me that I was the girl to whom those things had happened.  Still, I could not cry.  Useless to urge how lucky it was my knee had just been saved.  What use was a knee, I thought bitterly, if I could never fly round again!  When was the very soonest I could get about with one of these artificial legs, I asked, and he swore to me that if all went well, in a year’s time.  A year!  I had fancied the autumn at latest.  Little did I know it would be even longer.  That night was the worst I’d had.  It is a useless occupation to kick against the pricks anyway, and the hours dragged slowly on till morning came at last.  When it was light enough I looked round, as well as I could at least, lying flat on my back, for something to distract my thoughts.  Seeing a Pearson’s Magazine with George Robey on the cover, I drew it towards me and saw there was an article by him inside.  Quite sure that “George” would cheer me up if anyone could I turned the pages and found it.  It not only cheered me but gave me the first real ray of hope.  There in print was all Captain C. had told me the night before, and somehow, to see a thing in print is doubly convincing.  It was on disabled soldiers and the pluck with which they bore their misfortunes.

There was one story of two of his friends who walked into his dressing-room one day.  After dancing about the place they told him they were out of the army.

“I don’t see much wrong with you,” said G., eyeing them up and down.  They then whacked their legs soundly and never flinched once, for they each had an artificial one!  I blessed George from the bottom of my heart.  Someone told him this, and he promptly sat down and wrote to me, enclosing several signed postcards and a drawing of himself at the end of the letter—­his own impression of what he looked like in the pre-historic scene in Zigzag—­and a promise of a box for the show as soon as I got to Blighty.  Some jolly good fellow!

The countless flowers I received were one of the chief joys.  I simply adored lying and looking at them.

Every single person I knew seemed to have remembered me, and boxes of chocolates filled my shelf as well.

The Parc d’Automobiles Belges sent such a huge gerbe that two men had to carry it, and, emblazoned on a broad ribbon of the Belgian colours, spanning the whole thing, was my name and an inscription in letters of gold!  Captain Saxon Davies, from the “Christol” in Boulogne, had fruit sent over in the boat from Covent Garden delivered at the hospital every morning by motor cycle.  I felt quite overwhelmed; everyone seemed determined to spoil me.

One day the Padre had come in to see me and was just concluding a prayer when there was a tap, and the door opened on the instant.  A large bottle, the size of a magnum, was pushed in by an orderly, who, seeing the Padre, departed in haste. (I was squinting up through my eyelashes and saw it all and just pulled myself together in time to say “Amen.”)