But as I saw that her eyes were foolishly moist, I was not as offended as I might have been by her perception of the ludicrous.

When I said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list.  My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares.  I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied.  I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee.  I was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a good deal of special work connected with one of our battalions that was covering itself with glory and little mounds topped with white crosses at the front.  If you think I lived a Tom-tabby, tea-party sort of life, you are quite mistaken, if the War Office could have its way, it would have lashed me in red tape, gagged me with Regulations, and sealing-waxed me up in my bed-room.  And there are thousands of us who have shaken our fists under the nose of the War Office and shouted, “All your blighting, Man-with-the-Mudrake officialdom shan’t prevent us from serving our country.”  And it hasn’t!  The very Government itself, in spite of its monumental efforts, has not been able to shackle us into inertia or drug us into apathy.  Such non-combatant francs-tireurs in England have done a power of good work.

And then, of course, there was the hospital which, in one way or another, took up a good deal of my time.

I was reposing in the front garden one late afternoon in mid-June, after a well-filled day, when a car pulled up at the gate, in which were Betty (at the wheel) and a wounded soldier, in khaki, his cap perched on top of a bandaged head.  I don’t know whether it is usual for young women in nurse’s uniform to career about the country driving wounded men in motor cars, but Betty did it.  She cared very little for the usual.  She came in, leaving the man in the car, and crossed the lawn, flushed and bright-eyed, a refreshing picture for a tired man.

“We’re in a fix up at the hospital,” she announced as soon as she was in reasonable speaking distance, “and I want you to get us out of it.”

Sitting on the grass, she told me the difficulty.  A wounded soldier, discharged from some distant hospital, and home now on sick furlough before rejoining his depot, had been brought into the hospital with a broken head.  The modern improvements on vinegar and brown paper having been applied, the man was now ready to leave.  I interrupted with the obvious question.  Why couldn’t he go to his own home?  It appeared that the prospect terrified him.  On his arrival, at midday, after eight months’ absence in France, he found that his wife had sold or pawned practically everything in the place, and that the lady herself was in the violent phase of intoxication.  His natural remonstrances not being received with due meekness, a quarrel arose from which the lady emerged victorious.  She laid her poor husband out with a poker.  They could not keep him in hospital.  He shied at an immediate renewal of conjugal life.  He had no relations or intimate friends in Wellingsford.  Where was the poor devil to go?