not talk. It is no life for a man.

I said to Pinker this morning, "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 my language is so much
more complicated than it ought to be) that thinking in one's bath is a
self-deception. I lay in my own bath last night and thought very deep
thoughts, but often when we 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 make more noise
afterwards because they set her hymns to ragtime."

"What good does it do them?" said the V.A.D., " ... 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 humming, bees round a bush of
flowers, the ticking of a clock, the passing of life....

Now and then there are incidents, as just now. Two orderlies came in
with a stretcher to fetch Mr. Smith (an older man than Smiff and a more
dignified) 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 name," called out Smiff, waving his amputated
ankle. "Better get your hand in!"

Mr. Smith got in slowly and departed from the ward, sitting bolt
upright, gripping the sides with his hands.

Some of the wards and the Sisters' bunks are charming at this time of
the year, now that larkspur and rambler-roses are cheap in the market.

But