rd made a sudden cry in the hedge. I did smell spring,
and I'm starving....

I thought last night that a hospital ward is, above all, a serene place,
in spite of pain and blood and dressings. Gravity rules it and order and
a quiet procession of duties.

Last night I made beds with the eldest Sister. The eldest Sister is good
company to make beds with; she is quiet unless I rouse her, and when I
talk she smiles with her eyes. I like to walk slowly round the ward,
stooping and rising over the white beds, flicking the sheets
mechanically from the mattress, and finally turning the mattress with an
ease which gives me pleasure because I am strong.

In life nothing is too small to please....

Once during the evening the eldest Sister said to me:

"I am worried about your throat. Is it no better?"

And from the pang of pleasure and gratitude that went through me I have
learnt the value of such remarks.

In every bed there is some one whose throat is at least more sore than
mine....

Though I am not one of those fierce V.A.D.'s who scoff at sore throats
and look for wounds, yet I didn't know it was so easy to give pleasure.

The strange, disarming ways of men and women!

I stood in the bunk to-night beside the youngest Sister, and she looked
up suddenly with her absent stare and said, "You're not so nice as you
used to be!"

I was dumbfounded. Had I been "nice"? And now different....

What a maddening sentence, for I felt she was going to refuse me any
spoken explanation.

But one should not listen to what people say, only to what they mean,
and she was one of those persons whose minds one must read for oneself,
since her words so often deformed her thoughts.

The familiarity and equality of her tone seemed to come from some mood
removed from the hospital, where her mistrustful mind was hovering about
a trouble personal to herself.

She did not mean "You are not so nice...." but "You don't like me so
much...."

She was so young, it was all so new to her, she wanted so to be "liked"!
But there was this question of her authority....

How was she to live among her fellows?

Can one afford to disdain them? Can one steer happily with indifference?
Must one, to be "liked," bend one's spirit to theirs? And, most
disturbing question of all, is to be "liked" the final standard?

Whether to wear, or not to wear, a mask towards one's world? For there
is so much that is not ripe to show--change and uncertainty..