hom, for one or two
unimportant reasons, it is the custom to laugh. The men, who fall in
with our moods with a docility which I am beginning to suspect is a
mask, admit too that she is comic.

This afternoon, when she was sitting by Corrigan's bed and talking to
him I saw where her treatment of him differed from ours. She treats him
as though he were an individual; but there is more in it than that....
She treats him as though he had a wife and children, a house and a back
garden and responsibilities: in some manner she treats him as though he
had dignity.

I thought of yesterday's injection. That is the difference: that is what
the Sisters mean when they say "the boys."...

The story of Rees is not yet ended in either of the two ways in which
stories end in a hospital. His arm does not get worse, but his courage
is ebbing. This morning I wheeled him out to the awful sleep again--for
the third time.

They will take nearly anything from each other. The only thing that
cheered Rees up as he was wheeled away was the voice of Pinker crying,
"Jer want white flowers on yer coffin? We'll see to the brass 'andles!"

From Pinker, a little boy from the Mile End Road, they will stand
anything. He is the servant of the ward (he says), partly through his
good nature and a little because he has two good arms and legs. "I ain't
no skivvy," he protests all the time, but every little odd job gets
done.

Rees, when he wakes, wakes sobbing and says, "Don' go away, nurse...."
He holds my hand in a fierce clutch, then releases it to point in the
air, crying "There's the pain!" as though the pain filled the air and
rose to the rafters. As he wakes it centralizes, until at last comes the
moment when he says, "Me arm aches cruel," and points to it. Then one
can leave him.

It was the first time I had heard a man sing at his dressing. I was
standing at the sterilizer when Rees's song began to mount over the
screen that hid him from me. ("Whatever is that?" "Rees's tubes going
in.")

It was like this: "Ah ... ee ... oo, Sister!" and again: "Sister ... oo
... ee ... ah!" Then a little scream and his song again.

I heard her voice: "Now then, Rees, I don't call that much of a song."
She called me to make his bed, and I saw his left ear was full of tears.

O visitors, who come into the ward in the calm of the long afternoon,
when the beds are neat and clean and the flowers out on the tables and
the V.A.D.'s sit sewing at splints and