Part 17 (2/2)

”Oh well, we ht tone is what he cannot endure He does not believe in cure and will not believe in cure It has become an article of faith: his ulcers will never be cured He has a silent scorn of hospitals He can wind a perfect bandage and he knows the rules; beyond that he pays as little attention as possible to what goes on

When his dressing is over he tilts his thin, intelligent face at the ceiling ”Don't you ever read?” I asked him

”I haven't the patience,” he replied But he has the patience to lie like that with his thin lips compressed and a frown on his face for hours, for dayssince Mons

I have come to the conclusion that he has a violent soul, that he dare not talk It is no life for a , ”I wish you'd hurry up over your bath; I've got to get it scrubbed out by nine”

”Don't you hurry me, nurse,” said Pinker, ”it's the on'y time I can think, in me bath”

I should like to have parried with Pinker (only ht to be) that thinking in one's bath is a self-deception I lay in hts, but often e think our thoughts are deep they are only vague Bath thoughts are wonderful, but there's nothing ”to” them

We had a heated discussion to-day as to whether the old lady who leaves a tract beneath a single rose by each bedside could longer be tolerated

”She is a nuisance,” said the Sister; ”the men tiood does it do them?” said the VAD, ”and I have to put the roses in water!”

I rode the highest horse of all: ”Her inquiries about their souls are an impertinence Why should they be bothered?”

These are the sort of things they say in debating societies But Life talks differently

Pinker said, ”Makes the po'r ole lady 'appy!”

As one bends one's head low over the splint one sits unnoticed, a part of the furniture of the ward The sounds of the ward rise and fill the ears; it is like listening to a kettle hu of a clock, the passing of life

Now and then there are incidents, as just noo orderlies came in with a stretcher to fetch Mr Snified) away to a convalescent home Mr Smith has never been to France, but walked into our ward one day with a sore on his foot which had to be cut He was up and dressed in his bedraggled khaki uniform when the stretcher-bearers came for him

He looked down his nose at the stretcher ”I don't much like the look of that,” he said The stretcher-bearers waited for him

He stood irresolute ”I never bin in one of them, and I don't want to make a start”

”Its bad luck to be our naet your hand in!”

Mr S bolt upright, gripping the sides with his hands

So at this time of the year, now that larkspur and rambler-roses are cheap in the market

But the love of decoration is not woh the dispensary hatchway I saw three empty poison-bottles, each with a poppy stuck in its neck

Everything in the dispensary is beautiful--its glasses, its flalobes; but her than the corridor in which we stand and look up into it, through a hatchway in the wall There is so in that: one feels like Gulliver

No woman has ever been into this bachelors' te at a small square panel set in the wall of the corridor the panel flies up and a bachelor is seen from the waist to the knees If he feels well anddown atascetic face and bleached hair, or a beard and a pair of bearded nostrils