over his bed.

But the anaesthetist couldn't be found.

He didn't take any part in the discussion such as saying, "Yes, I will
stand it...." but waited with interest showing on his bony face, and
when they glanced down at him and said, "Let's get it through now!" he
rolled over to undo his safety-pin that I might take off his sling.

It was all very fine for the theatre people to fill his shoulder
chockful of pluggings while he lay unconscious on the table; they had
packed it as you might stuff linen into a bag: it was another matter to
get it out.

I did not dare touch his hand with that too-easy compassion which I
have noticed here, or whisper to him "It's nearly over...." as the
forceps pulled at the stiffened gauze. It wasn't nearly over.

Six inches deep the gauze stuck, crackling under the pull of the
forceps, blood and puss leaping forward from the cavities as the steady
hand of the doctor pulled inch after inch of the gauze to the light. And
when one hole was emptied there was another, five in all.

Sometimes, when your mind has a grip like iron, your stomach will undo
you; sometimes, when you could say "To-day is Tuesday, the fifth of
August," you faint. There are so many parts of the body to look after,
one of the flock may slip your control while you are holding the other
by the neck. But Waker had his whole being in his hands, without so much
as clenching them.

When we had finished and Sister told me to wipe the sweat on his
forehead, I did so reluctantly, as though one were being too exacting in
drawing attention to so small a sign.

I must say that the dairyman seems to me quite mad, and I only wonder
how little it is noticed. He will sit in a chair beside Palmer for
hours, raising and lowering his eyebrows and fitting imaginary gloves on
to his fingers.

An inspecting general, pausing at his bed this morning, said: "A
dairyman, are you? Frightened of horses, are you? Then what do you do
about the cows?"

He was pleased with his own joke, and the dairyman smiled too,
uncomprehendingly, his eyebrows shooting up and down like swallows'
wings. Such jokes mean nothing to him; he is where no joke but his own
will ever please him any more....

Palmer doesn't like sitting near him, but since it is too much trouble
to move he allows it--poor Palmer, who has a piece of metal somewhere in
his brain and is never seen without one long hand to his aching head. He
said to me yesterday when I asked him w