I.

Once there was a girl you may have known as Alice. Not that Alice, the one who met the White Rabbit: that girl's name really was Alice, in fact. This Alice was the one who, with her brothers and sister, found a treasure and an Indian uncle who turned out not to be poor at all, spent a summer in a house with a real moat, turned two white mice into quite decent adventurers and united another uncle (Albert's uncle, not their own) with his long-lost love. Those things all happened when Alice was quite young, and if other adventures happened to her and the others as they grew up, they have not told me about them.

Other adventures probably did happen; they were the sort that things happen to. Perhaps you know people of that sort yourself, or maybe you are one: the sort who trips over his front doorstep and uncovers a lost treasure, or who catches an elderly gentleman by the elbow just as he is about to fall under a train and he adopts you and bequeaths his fortune to you, or who meets a magical creature of fabulous antiquity and he gives you three wishes. I have always wished to be that sort of person myself.

Alice was one, and so were her brothers and sisters. And since you knew her as Alice, that is the name I will use for her here, and I will call her sister and brothers Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Noel and H.O., in case you have met them before under those names. Noel was Alice's twin.

I do not know what other adventures befell these Bastables (for that is the name they took when telling their own stories, to disguise their own ancient and honourable name) as they grew up, but once they were grown they found themselves in a real adventure, and no mistaking.

Only this was not the sort of pleasant adventure they had experienced in their callow youths, nor was it one that could be hidden so none of the adults would notice it. This was a war, and it embroiled the whole world in it.

Oswald, who was studying to become a barrister, wrote to Alice to say that he was leaving his studies to sign up'

"Here's my chance for adventure at last!" he wrote, as cheerfully as if he were going to the seaside. "Dicky is leaving his business and will come with me, and next time I write you we'll be in khaki."

Noel took leave of Oxford at the end of the term, along with most of the men in his year. By then the war no longer seemed such an adventure.

"I must go," he wrote, and Alice, who had heard stories by then about the conditions in France, wrote him back, reminding him to take his muffler and all his warm things and begging him to keep his feet as dry as he could.

Dora had trained as trained as a nurse. Of course she joined the V.A.D at once, but then astonished all who knew her timid, prudent ways by applying to be sent to the hospitals just behind the battle lines. She was so close to the trenches that the nurses could sometimes hear the whistling of shells. Sometimes, when the tide of battle shifted, they had to pack up all their tents, their hospital things and their patients and move to a safer spot.

Dora seemed to gain comfort in helping other women's brothers, since she could not protect her own. Forgetful of self, she earned a reputation as a heroine, refusing to flee under fire as long as her patients needed her, and her letters home were full of wounded soldiers and medicines and bandages.

Alice knew she had not the patience to join Dora in her hospital, and in any case only trained nurses were sent to the field hospitals. H.O. was not old enough to enlist, and he and Alice often commiserated together at having to stay at home.

"As if I were a little boy! And they said that every man is needed who can fight," lamented H.O.

"At least you will grow older," poor Alice would point out. "I'll always be a woman. Oh, if only I had been born a boy!"

When H.O. was finally of age, he signed up immediately and joined his brothers in France. The next day, Alice packed her shortest skirts and her oldest waists, consigned her father and the Indian uncle to each other's care, and became a Land Girl.

I do not know if you know what the Women's Land Army was. If you don't you can just look it up; I don't have time to explain right now. But Alice was in it, and she liked it.

She worked hard and learnt all about farming; her face turned brown, and she felt that she was doing her bit in the war. But the thing she liked most was driving the motorcar, when seed needed to be brought from one place to another or a message had to be taken somewhere.

One morning, she was sent to deliver three other girls to a village far out in the country. They had a most enjoyable driving, talking and laughing all the way down.

At the new farm, they were fed fresh brown bread and farm butter, and milk that was more than half cream, and then the girls were all put to bed on two enormous featherbeds made by the mistress of the farm from her own geese in happier days. (Happier for the farm, I mean, not for the geese.)

In the morning Alice said goodbye to the other girls and set off for the long drive home and it was then that Alice's adventure really began to happen.