It rains every day.  This may be a “providence,” as the floods are keeping the Germans away.  The sound of constant rain on the window-panes is a little melancholy.  Let us pray that in singleness and cheerfulness of heart we may do our little bit of work.

[Page Heading:  EXPEDITION TO DUNKIRK]

23 December.—­Yesterday I motored into Dunkirk, and did a lot of shopping.  By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk!  After many vicissitudes I met Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept at the club.  I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my boots brushed and hot water at my door.  It was so like home again.

I was leaving the station to-day when shelling began again.  One shell dropped not far behind the bridge, which I had just crossed, and wrecked a house.  Another fell into a boat on the canal and wounded the occupants badly.  I went to tell the Belgian Sisters not to go down to the station, and I lunched at their house, and then went home till the evening work began.  People are always telling one that danger is now over—­a hidden gun has been discovered and captured, and there will be no more shelling.  Quel blague!  The shelling goes on just the same whether hidden guns are captured or not.

I can’t say at present when I shall get home, because no one ever knows what is going to happen.  I don’t quite know who would take my place at the soup-kitchen if I were to leave.

25 December.—­My Christmas Day began at midnight, when I walked home through the moonlit empty streets of Furnes.  At 2 a.m. the guns began to roar, and roared all night.  They say the Allies are making an attack.

I got up early and went to church in the untidy school-room at the hospital, which is called the nurses’ sitting-room.  Mr. Streatfield had arranged a little altar, which was quite nice, and had set some chairs in an orderly row.  As much as in him lay—­from the altar linen to the white artificial flowers in the vases—­all was as decent as could be and there were candles and a cross.  We were quite a small congregation, but another service had been held earlier, and the wounded heard Mass in their ward at 6 a.m.  The priests put up an altar there, and I believe the singing was excellent.  Inside we prayed for peace, and outside the guns went on firing.  Prince Alexander of Teck came to our service—­a big soldierly figure in the bare room.

[Page Heading:  CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM]

After breakfast I went to the soup-kitchen at the station, as usual, then home—­i.e., to the hospital to lunch.  At 3.15 came a sort of evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children.  Anything more touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears.  One tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was introduced to me as “une blessee, madame.”  Another little boy in the hospital is always spoken of gravely as “the civilian.”