“Who told you to go?”

“Matron.”

Sir Stephen benevolently put in: 

“But the matron had always informed us that it was you who said you wouldn’t stay another minute.  We have it in the correspondence.”

“That’s what she says.  But I say different.  And I can prove it.”

Said G.J.: 

“There must be some misunderstanding.  We have every confidence in the matron, and she’s still with us.”

“Then I’m sorry for you.”

He turned warily to another aspect of the subject.

“Do I gather that you went straight from Paris to Serbia?”

“Yes.  The unit was passing through, and I joined it.”

“But how did you obtain your passport?  You had no certificate from us?”

Nurse Smaith tossed her perilous red hair.

“Oh!  No difficulty about that.  I am not without friends, as you may say.”  Some of the committee looked up suspiciously, aware that the matron had in her report hinted at mysterious relations between Nurse Smaith and certain authorities.  “The doctor in charge of the Serbian unit was only too glad to have me.  Of course, if you’re going to believe everything matron says—­” Her tone was becoming coarser, but the committee could neither turn her out nor cure her natural coarseness, nor indicate to her that she was not using the demeanour of committee-rooms.  She was firmly lodged among them, and she went from bad to worse.  “Of course, if you’re going to swallow everything matron says—!  It isn’t as if I was the only one.”

“May I ask if you are at present employed?”

“I don’t quite see what that’s got to do with it,” said Nurse Smaith, still gaining ground.

“Certainly not.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  I was only hoping that these visits here are not inconvenient to you.”

“Well, as it seems so important, I my sy I’m going out to Salonika next week, and that’s why I want this business settled.”  She stopped, and as the committee remained diffidently and apprehensively silent, she went on:  “It isn’t as if I was the only one.  Why!  When we were in the retreat of the Serbian Army owver the mahntains I came across by chance, if you call it chance, another nurse that knew all about her—­been under her in Bristol for a year.”

A young member, pricking up, asked: 

“Were you in the Serbian retreat, Nurse?”

“If I hadn’t been I shouldn’t be here now,” said Nurse Smaith, entirely recovered from her stage-fright and entirely pleased to be there then.  “I lost all I had at Ypek.  All I took was my medals, and them I did take.  There were fifty of us, British, French and Russians.  We had nearly three weeks in the mahntains.  We slept rough all together in one room, when there was a room, and when there wasn’t we slept in stables.  We had nothing but black bread, and that froze in the haversacks, and if we took our boots off we had