But to this young man I talked about his friends whom I might never see again. He had brought back a bundle of their books, and in their names he thanked me for my 'kindness' to them: as if it were all on one side! As if they had not, all of them, done more for me than I for them! They were doing things up to the end; bringing back their books, at their plain inconvenience, on their way to the forefront of the fight; even bringing me, to the eleventh hour, their little offerings of books, the last tokens of their good-will. It was hard to tell them we were closing down, it might be only for a day or two; harder still to say what one felt without striking an unhelpful note; and I took no risks. We could only refuse their money all the afternoon, entertain them as best we could, and pack them off with a hand-grip and 'Good luck!' There was trouble, too, behind the scenes. Our dear old Madame was one of those for whom the town-crier had rung a knell; by half-past three she must be out of house, home, and native place. But it was not the shipwreck of her simple life that brought the poor soul in tears to the hut. All the world knows how the homely French take the personal tragedies of war, with the national shrug and a dry eye for their share of the national burden; and Madame was French to her finger-tips. She was therefore an artist, who put her hand to nothing she was not minded to finish as creditably as the good God would let her. Think, then, of her innocent shame at having to deliver our week's laundry wringing wet from the mangle! It was the last mortification; and all our protestations were powerless to assuage the sting to her sensibilities. As for her helpmate, our orderly, for all his capabilities he had never replaced the two heroes of the other hut in my affections; and at this juncture he had managed to get a little drunk. But from information since received one can only wonder it did not happen oftener; for the man had tragedy in his life, and his story would be the most dramatic in these pages had I the heart to tell it. By us he had done more than his duty, and for the hut almost as much as Madame herself. The last sight of each was saddening, and yet a part of the closing scenes, as the pair had been part of our lives.