A mile out of the town upon the banks of a tributary of the Meuse stood
a deserted glass factory which had been converted by the French into a
garage for a fleet of thirty cars. Above the garage was a large attic
used as a dormitory for the mechanics, soldier-cooks, drivers and
clerks. In a smaller room at the end slept the non-commissioned
officers--the _brigadier_ and the two _marechaux des logis_.
A hundred yards from the factory, built upon the brink of the stream
which was now in flood, and reached from the road by a narrow wooden
bridge, stood a tarred hut of wood and tarpaulin. It was built upon
simple lines. A narrow corridor ran down the centre of it, and on either
hand were four square cells divided one from the other by grey paper
stretched upon laths of wood--making eight in all. At one end was a
small hall filled with mackintoshes. At the other a sitting-room.
This was the home of the women drivers attached to the garage. In one
of these paper cells, henceforward to be her own, Fanny set up her
intimate life.
* * * * *
Outside the black hut the jet-black night poured water down. Inside, the
eight cubicles held each a woman, a bed, and a hurricane lantern. Fanny,
in her paper box, listened to the scratching of a pen next door, then
turned her eyes as a new and nearer scratching caught her ear.
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