When You Were Absent

8

"I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go unto the House of the Lord.'" It was the chorus we had learned in our little school to sing on Sundays. As I still had odds and ends to do about the house, I remained behind to go with the Chinese family. I thought if possible they should be fed before we started out. I had just sat down in my dressing gown to a bowl of oatmeal while I was nursing Van Dyke, when Mr. Spence appeared at the door to say Dr. Clift had gotten a red cross lorry for half-an-hour and to hurry. I put the porridge bowl on the floor and the milk and butter for the animals, and we grabbed what we could and ran. The air raid began before we got to the lorry and we crawled underneath to avoid the flying shrapnel. As soon as that attack was over we were away before the next. We careened along the road at a fearful speed and arrived at Mrs. Clift's flat-I still in my dressing gown. That night the military compulsory evacuation order came. Had we waited for it, we should have had to leave with all those children in the dark, and would probably have been taken to the centre of the town, where conditions were appalling and where water was so scarce that at one time a glass cost $2.00. As it was, the University situation was far enough out so that we could get water from the mountain streams when the waterworks were damaged. Besides that, I was with my dear friend and Bible teacher, Mrs. Clift, and as Dr. Clift had to go to his post, we were company for each other. Miss Day now felt she was free to leave me, and volunteered for service. She was sent to a hospital where she was given dysentery cases to nurse. Although she was not a professional nurse, they soon discovered that she was trustworthy and despised no work no matter how disgusting.

Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker