hich convalescent home he was
going to, "It doesn't matter. We both go to the same kind before
long...." jerking his thumb at the dairyman. As for the latter, there
surely can be no escape, but for Palmer....

"They won't take it out; too risky. Seen my X-ray picture?"

"No."

"You look at it. Right in the middle of the brain. Seems funny that if
I say I'm willing to risk it, why they shouldn't be."

"You're willing to risk it?"

"I'm only nineteen! What's the good of my head to me! I can't remember
the name of the last hospital I was at...."

Ah, these hurried conversations sandwiched between my duties, when in
four sentences the distilled essence of bitterness is dropped into my
ear!

"Sister, what will they do with Palmer?"

"They are going to discharge him. They won't operate."

"But what will happen to him?"

"I don't know."

"But if he is willing to risk his life to save his brain, can they still
refuse?"

"They won't operate."

Pinker is full of grains of knowledge. He has just discovered a
wonderful justification for not getting up directly he is told off for a
job.

"I never refuse a nurse," he said, as he thoughtfully picked over the
potatoes ("Li'l men, li'l spuds!" he says, to excuse himself for taking
all the sought-after small ones).... "I never refuse a nurse. But I like
to finish me game of draughts first--like Drake."

Pinker notices everything. He took the grocer for a ride on the tram
yesterday. "'E got so excited he got singing 'Tipperary,' an' the
blood-vessels on his neck goin' fit to burst. Weren't he, Bill?"

He appealed to Monk, whose name is George.

(By the way, I wonder when people will stop calling them "Tommy" and
call them "Bill." I never heard the word "Tommy" in a soldier's mouth:
he was a red-coated man. "But every mate's called 'Bill,' ain't 'e,
Bill?")

From the camp across the road the words of command float in through the
ward window.

"Halt!" and "Left wheel!" and "Right wheel!..."

They float into the ward bearing the sense of heat and dust, and of the
bumping of the saddle. The dairyman has perhaps put me a bit against the
camp across the road.

When the dressings are finished and we scrub the enamel bowls in the
annexe, one can see all the dairymen and all the plumbers, _chefs_ and
shopwalkers bumping up and down in a ring amid a cloud of dust, while
the voice of the sergeant cries out those things that my dairyman used
to think of in his slee