[Page Heading:  A BELGIAN DINNER-PARTY]

The Joos family are quite a study, and so kind.  On Christmas Eve I dined with them, and they gave me the best of all they had.  There was a pheasant, which someone had given the doctor (I fancy he is a very small practitioner amongst the poor people); surely, never did a bird give more pleasure.  I had known of its arrival days before by seeing Fernande, the little girl, decorated with feathers from its tail.  Then the good papa must be decorated also, and these small jokes delighted the whole family to the point of ecstasy.

On Christmas Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully arranged, of presenting Madame Joos—­who is young and pretty—­and the doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child’s umbrella and a toy gun.  There wasn’t even a comic address on the parcels; but Yrma, the servant, carefully trained for the part, brought them in in fits of delight, and all the family laughed with joy till the tears ran down their cheeks.  As they wiped their eyes, they admitted they were sick with laughter.  After supper we had the pianola, played by papa; and I must say that, when one can get nothing else, this instrument gives a great deal of pleasure.  One gets a sort of ache for music which is just as bad as being hungry.

27 December.—­Bad, bad weather again.  It has rained almost continuously for five weeks.  Yesterday it snowed.  Always the wind blows, and something lashes itself against the panes.  One can’t leave the windows open, as the rooms get flooded.  It is amazingly cold o’ nights, I can’t sleep for the cold.

We have some funny incidents at the station sometimes.  A particularly amusing one occurred the other day, when three ladies in knickerbockers and khaki and badges appeared at our soup-kitchen door and announced they were “on duty” there till 6 o’clock.  I was not there, but the scene that followed has been described to me, and has often made me laugh.

It seems the ladies never got further than the door!  Some people might have been firm in the “Too sorry!  Come-some-other-day-when-we-are-not-so-busy” sort of way.  Not so Miss ——.  In more primitive times she would probably have gone for the visitors with a broom, but her tongue is just as rough as the hardest besom, and from their dress ("skipping over soldiers’ faces with breeches on, indeed!”) to their corps there was very little left of them.

[Page Heading:  OUR TROUBLE WITH SPIES]

It wasn’t really from the dog-in-the-manger spirit that the little woman acted.  The fact is that Belgians and French run the station together, and they are all agreed on one thing, which is, that no one but an authorised and registered person is to come within its doors.  Heaven knows the trouble there has been with spies, and this rule is absolutely necessary.

Two Red Cross khaki-clad men have been driving everywhere in Furnes, and have been found to be Germans.  Had we permitted itinerant workers, the authorities gave notice that the kitchen would have to close.