m. A damp, chilly fog was hanging low
over the valley, it penetrated to the skin, and one shuddered. The
railway was congested, but train arrived after train, open trucks all
packed with men whose breath rose in steam, and whose clothes were
sparkling with the dew. We stepped from the station door into a thick
black "pease puddingy" mud, as though the Thames foreshore had been
churned up by traffic. Standing knee deep in the mud were weary oxen and
horses attached to carts of all descriptions, with wheels whose rims,
swollen by the mire, were sunk almost to the axles. Across the mud,
surrounded by shaky red brick walls, the District Civil Hospital showed
pale in the morning, and we made towards it, splashing.
We came to the lodge: an English girl was doing something to a kitchen
stove. She stared at us.
"Hullo!"
"We've just come from Vrnjatchka Banja," we explained.
She took Jo to the hospital, while Blease and Jan dropped their heavy
luggage and washed in a basin, provided by a Serb servant girl.
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