midday
In the schoolroom the rough benches were marked with names and crosses . On the whitewashed walls were coloured maps of Galicia and tables of the Austrian kings and queens ; on the blackboard still an unfinished arithmetical sum and on the master 's desk a pile of exercise books . In a moment everything was changed ; the sanitars had turned the schoolroom into a dormitory , another room was to be our dining-room , another a bedroom for the Sisters . In the high raftered kitchen our midday meal was already cooking ; the little cobbled court was piled high with luggage . In the field beyond the house the sanitars had pitched their tents . I walked out into the little garden -- a charming place with yew hedges , a lichen-covered well and old thick apple-trees , and here I found an old man in a broad-brimmed straw hat tending the bees . The hives were open and he was working with a knife whilst the bees hung in a trembling hovering cloud about him .