Just before dinner time the Second Lieutenant from the A. R. came in, looking full of mysterious importance. “The C. O. leaves this noon,” he said. “He’s ordered to report at Souilly by twelve tonight. I’ll tell you all about it later.” Later I learned. Inspectors had been visiting the dump. They had found it in a very dangerous state indeed. The wet weather has affected the explosives so that should the sun come out for a day or two the chemical change ensuing would in all probability cause an explosion which would set off the whole dump with its millions of dollars worth of high explosives. In which case little Mauvages would of course go higher than Halifax. The C. O. has been removed and the Second Lieutenant left in charge. The work of destroying the dangerous explosives is to be pursued at top speed. In the meanwhile we will pray for continued rain. I received two gifts today that touched me deeply. One was a pretty pink embroidered scarf from the boys at the aviation field. The lad who brought it to me had walked twelve miles, into Gondrecourt and back again in the sleety rain, to buy it! The other was a package labeled; “Wishing you a Mary Xmas from the Operators at A. S. No. 9, and may the next one be in the States.” Inside were two boxes of chocolates, their Christmas candy issue! As for me, I am ashamed—I have been so busy and so bothered that I just couldn’t seem to manage a gift for anyone, not for Bill nor Nick nor even Monsieur le Curé. Mauvages, December 28. Neddy has come back! His battery has just arrived at Rosières and last night he got off and walked over here to see me. We sat and talked by the kitchen-stove and I found him just the same shy, slow-spoken dreamy lad. The long months at the front have seemingly instilled nothing bitter in him, nor left any scars on his spirit, no matter if he is wearing a wonderful belt quite covered with German buttons all “cut off of dead ones.” He dug out of his pockets for me two odd little picture frames made cleverly out of rings from German fuses, with pieces of celluloid cut from the eye-holes of German gas-masks for glass, and held together with surgeon’s plaster. Then of course there were the latest pictures of his girl to show me. He told me about the battery. On the whole their casualties have been light. Jones was gassed, and is in hospital somewhere; it seems just like Jones, somehow, to get gassed! The boys, he told me, had been fairly homesick for the little old Artillery School Hut,—most of all, he said, they had missed my hot chocolate. Then just to make the occasion perfect, who should walk in but Snow! Snow’s battery is at Delouze, two towns away; but Snow has been on leave down on the Riviera, having the time of his young life. “I never could see what there was in this country worth fighting for,” he told me, “until I went down there. But now I know.”