At Wimbledon, instead of having to wait in a queue for nine or ten hours as I had expected, I was given priority and released at once; Ireland was officially a ‘theatre of war’ and demobilization from theatres of war had priority over home-service demobilization. So after a hurried visit to my parents, who were living close by, I continued to Hove, arriving at supper-time. When I came in, I had a sudden terror that made me unable to speak. I seemed to see Nancy’s mother. She was looking rather plump and staid and dressed unlike herself, and did not appear to recognize me. She was sitting at the table between Nancy and her father. It was like a bad dream; I did not know what to say or do. I knew I was ill, but this was worse than illness. Then Nicholson introduced me: ‘This is Nancy’s Aunt Dora, just over from Canada.’ I warned them all that I had influenza; and hurried off to bed. Within a day or two everybody in the house had caught it except Nicholson and the baby and one servant who kept it off by a gipsy’s charm. I think it was the leg of a lizard tied in a bag round her neck. A new epidemic as bad as the summer one had started; there was not a nurse to be had in Brighton. Nicholson at last found two ex-nurses. One was competent, but frequently drunk, and when drunk she would ransack all the wardrobes and pile the contents into her own bags; the other, sober but incompetent, would stand a dozen times a day in front of the open window, spread out her arms, and cry in a stage-voice: ‘Sea, sea, give my husband back to me.’ The husband, by the way, was not drowned, merely unfaithful. A doctor, found with difficulty, said that I had no chance of recovering; it was septic pneumonia now and both my lungs were affected. But I had determined that, having come through the war, I would not allow myself to succumb to Spanish influenza. This, now, was the third time in my life that I had been given up as dying, and each time because of my lungs. The first occasion was when I was seven years old and had double-pneumonia following measles. Yet my lungs are naturally very sound, possibly the strongest part of me and, therefore, my danger mark. This time again I recovered and was up a few weeks later in time to see the mutiny of the Guards, when about a thousand men of all regiments marched out from Shoreham Camp and paraded through the streets of Brighton in protest against camp discipline.