The guns had been booming for perhaps five minutes when I heard running footsteps entering the square. Our square is so shut in and small that it echoes like a church; every sound is startling and can be heard in every part of it. I could not see to whom the footsteps belonged on account of the trees and the darkness. They entered on the side farthest from me, from the street where the red motor-buses pass. When they had reached the top, from which there is no exit, they hesitated; then came hurrying back along the side on which they would have to pass me. Tip-a-tap, tip-a-tap, tip-a-tap and panting breath—the sound of a woman's       high-heeled shoes against the pavement. Accompanying the tip-a-tap were funny, more frequent, shuffling noises, indistinct and confused. Three shadows grew out of the gloom, a small one on either side and a bigger one in the centre; as they drew near they resolved themselves into a lady in an evening-wrap and two children.     

       I was more glad than I cared to own, for I'd been feeling lonely. Now that peace has come and we've won the war, I don't mind acknowledging that I'd been feeling frightened; at the time I wouldn't have confessed it for the world lest the Huns should have got to know it. We London houses, trying to live up to the example of our soldiers, always pretended that we liked the excitement of airraids. We didn't really; we quaked in all our bricks and mortar. One's foundations aren't what they were when one is a hundred-and-ninety-eight years old. So I'm not ashamed to tell you that I was delighted when the lady and her children came in my direction. I tried to push my front-door wider that they might guess that they were welcome. I was terribly nervous that they might pass in their haste without seeing that I was anxious to give them shelter. It was shelter that they were looking for. In coming into the square they had been seeking a shortcut home.     

       They drew level without slackening their steps and had almost gone by me when, less than a quarter of a mile away, a bomb crashed deafeningly. Everything seemed to reel. Far and near you could hear the tinkling of splintered glass. The world leapt up red for a handful of seconds as though the door of a gigantic furnace had been flung open. Against the glow you could see the crouching roofs of houses, the crooked chimney-pots and the net-work of trees in the garden with their branches stripped and bare. The lady clutched at my railings to steady 

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