If you were outside a place and wanted to get in, what would you do? Ring the front door bell, of course, you say. Well, that’s what I did, but it wasn’t right, quite wrong, in fact. The person who opened the door to me seemed to think I must be dotty. I ought to have gone to the back door and taken off my hat and coat in a kind of mausoleum in the yard. By the time I had rectified all these mistakes it was a quarter past eight. I didn’t know how the veil ought to be worn either, so I put it on as the nurses did in Ross’s hospital in London, which turned out wrong, for when I went to matron for my orders, she snapped,— ’Washing up—you’re not an army sister yet, and no use at all to me unless you’re punctual.’ I could see that she meant something horrid, but couldn’t think what, and I blushed and stammered like a school child. There was a nice girl in the scullery who came behind the door and altered my veil and tried to console me by saying,— ’Matron isn’t a bit like that usually, only she’s absolutely overdone, as we all are.’ Then I started washing up. They had had kippers for breakfast, and I had no idea that they were so disgusting cold, or how impossible it was to prevent water going over one’s feet when one emptied a big panful down the sink. By the time I had been at it an hour I was soaking, I could feel it on my skin, and the floor was all awash. A diver’s costume would have been really useful. The girls who had been there for months thought I was such a fool. (They do not suffer fools gladly in a military hospital!) They were quite polite, of course, that’s why it was so hard. I’m not used to people being polite to me. The only person who was really decent was the charwoman, who was also new that morning, so perhaps she had a fellow feeling. She did not, however, seem to be quite clear as to what a V.A.D. was, for she said,— ’Oh, duckie, you are wet; new at it, ain’t you? Why don’t you buy yourself a mackintosh apron? I did in my first place, they aren’t expensive.’ Later on, when I had dried up a bit and was cleaning a saucepan with great vigour, she said,— ’Nice ’elp you’ll be to mother after this, duckie.’ I was very bucked at that remark. It’s nice to feel that one person, at any rate, believes you to be young enough to be ’a nice ’elp to mother.’