stiff, how funny! Lovely having the Croix de Guerre.  Quite makes up for it.  What?  Rather have your leg.  Dear me, how odd!  Wonderful what they do with those artificial limbs nowadays.  Know a man and really you can’t tell which is which. (Naturally not, any fool could make a leg the shape of the other!) Well, I really must be going.  I shall be able to tell all my friends I’ve seen you now and been able to cheer you up a little. Poor girl! So unfortunate!  Terribly cheerful, aren’t you?  Don’t seem to mind a bit.  Would you kindly ring for the lift?  I find these stairs so trying.  I’ve enjoyed myself so much.  Goodbye.”  Exit (goodby-ee).  In its way it was amusing at first, but one day I sent for the small porter, Tommy, aged twelve (I had begun to sympathise with the animals in the Zoo).  “Tommy,” I said, “if you dare to let anyone come up and see me unless they’re personal friends, you won’t get that shell head I promised you.  Don’t be put off, make them describe me.  You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

Tremendous excitement one day when I went out for my first drive in a car sent from the Transport Department of the Red Cross.  Two of the nurses came with me, and I was lifted in by the stalwart driver.  “A quiet drive round the park, I suppose, Miss?” he asked.  “No,” I said firmly, “down Bond Street and then round and round Piccadilly Circus first, and then the Row to watch the people riding” (an extremely entertaining pastime).  He had been in the Argentine and “knew a horse if he saw one,” and no mistake.

The next day a huge gilded basket of blue hydrangeas arrived from the “bird” flower shop in Bond Street, standing at least three feet high, the sole inscription on the card being, “From the Red Cross driver.”  It was lovely and I was extremely touched; my room for the time being was transformed.

I was promised a drive once a week, but they were unfortunately suspended as I had an operation on July 31st for the jumping sciatic nerve and once more was reduced to lying flat on my back.  There was a man over the mews who beat his wife regularly twice per week, or else she beat him.  I could never discover which, and used to lie staring into the darkness listening to the “sounds of revelry by night,” not to mention the choicest flow of language floating up into the air.  I was measured for a pair of crutches some time later by a lugubrious individual in a long black frock coat looking like an undertaker.  I objected to the way he treated me, as if I were already a “stiff,” ignoring me completely, saying to the nurse:  “Kindly put the case absolutely flat and full length,” whereupon he solemnly produced a tape measure!

I was moved to a nursing home for the month of August, as the hospital closed for cleaning, and there, quite forgetting to instruct the people about strangers, I was beset by another one afternoon.  A cousin who has been gassed and shell-shocked had come in to read to me.  There was a tap on the door.  “Mrs. Fierce,” announced the porter, and in sailed a lady whom I had never seen in my life before. (I want the readers of these “glimpses” to know that the following conversation is absolutely as it took place and has not been exaggerated or added to in the very least.)