Mr. Strickland and I are both laid up here, and Miss Logan nurses us devotedly.  Our joy is having a sitting-room with a fire in it.  Was there ever anything half so good as that fire, or half so homely, half so warm or so much one’s own?  I lie on three chairs in front of it, and headache and cold and throat are almost forgotten.  The wind howls, the sea roars, and aeroplanes fly overhead, but at least we have our fire and are at home.

17 February.—­Another cold, wet day.  I am alone in the flat with a “femme de menage” to look after me.  A doctor comes to see me sometimes.  Miss Logan and Mr. Strickland left this morning.  There was a tempest of rain, and I couldn’t think of being moved.  They were sweet and kind, and felt bad about leaving me; but I am just loving being left alone with some books and my fire.

I have been lying in bed correcting proofs.  Oh, the joy of being at one’s own work again!  Just to see print is a pleasure.  I believe I have forgotten all I ever knew before the war began.  A magazine article comes to me like a language I have almost forgotten.

18 February.—­This is the day that German “piracy” is supposed to begin.  We heard a great explosion early this morning, but it was only a mine that had been found on the shore being blown up.  The sailors’ aeroplane corps is opposite us, and we see Commander Samson and others flying off in the morning and whirling back at night, and then we hear there has been a raid somewhere.  When a Taube comes over here the sailors fire at it with a gun just opposite us, and then tell us they only do it to give us flower-vases—­i.e., empty shell-cases!

[Page Heading:  SOME STORIES OF THE WAR]

Mr. Holland came here to-day, and told me some humorous sides of his experiences with ambulances.  One man from the Church Army marched in, and said:  “I am a Christian and you are not.  I come here for petrol, and I ask it, not for the Red Cross, but in the name of Christ.”  Another man came dashing in, and said:  “I want to go to Poperinghe.  I was once there before, and the mud was beastly.  Send someone with me.”

My own latest experience was with an American woman of awful vulgarity.  I asked her if she was busy, like everyone else in this place, and she said: 

“No.  I was suffering from a nervous breakdown, so I came out here.  What is your war is my peace, and I now sleep like a baby.”

I want adjectives!  How is one to describe the people who come for one brief visit to the station or hospital with an intense conviction that they and they only feel the suffering or even notice the wants of the men.  Some are good workers.  Others I call “This-poor-fellow-has-had-none.”  Nurses may have been up all night, doctors may be worked off their feet, seven hundred men may have passed through the station, all wounded and all fed, but when our visitors arrive they discover that “This poor fellow has had none,” and firmly, and with a high sense of duty and of their own efficiency, they make the thing known.