It contained beds for fifty men; but on this day there were less than twenty sick and crippled Tommies convalescing here.  They had been brought out of France, out of wet and cold and filth, with hurried dressings on their hurts; and now they were in this bright, sweet, wholesome place, with soft beds under them and clean linen on their bodies, and flowers and dainties on the tables that stood alongside them, and the gentlefolk of the neighborhood to mind them as volunteer nurses.

There were professional nurses, of course; but, under them, the younger women of the wealthy families of this corner of Surrey were serving; and mighty pretty they all looked, too, in their crisp blue-and-white uniforms, with their arm badges and their caps, and their big aprons buttoned round their slim, athletic young bodies.  I judge there were about three amateur nurses to each patient.  Yet you could not rightly call them amateurs either; each of them had taken a short course in nursing, it seemed, and was amply competent to perform many of the duties a regular nurse must know.  Lady Aileen Roberts was with us during our tour of the hospital.  As a daily visitor and patroness she spent much of her time here and she knew most of the inmates by name.  She halted alongside one bed to ask its occupant how he felt.  He had been returned from the front suffering from pneumonia.

He was an Irishman.  Before he answered her he cast a quick look about the long hall.  Afternoon tea was just being served, consisting, besides tea, of homemade strawberry jam and lettuce sandwiches made of crisp fresh bread, with plenty of butter; and certain elderly ladies had just arrived, bringing with them, among other contributions, sheaves of flowers and a dogcart loaded with hothouse fruit and a dozen loaves of plumcake, which last were still hot from the oven and which radiated a mouth-watering aroma as a footman bore them in behind his mistress.  The patient looked at all these and he sniffed; and a grin split his face and an Irish twinkle came into his eyes.

“Thank you, me lady, for askin’,” he said; “but I’m very much afeared I’m gettin’ better.”

We might safely assume that the hospitals and the graveyard of Maubeuge would be busy places that evening, thereby offering strong contrasts to the rest of the town.  But I should add that we found two other busy spots, too:  the railroad station—­where the trains bringing wounded men continually shuttled past—­and the house where the commandant of the garrison had his headquarters.  In the latter place, as guests of Major von Abercron, we met at dinner that night and again after dinner a strangely mixed company.  We met many officers and the pretty American wife of an officer, Frau Elsie von, Heinrich, late of Jersey City, who had made an adventurous trip in a motor ambulance from Germany to see her husband before he went to the front, and who sent regards by us to scores of people in her