rmondsey Bert and his
shapeless, work-distorted, maybe bibulous-looking mother, exchanging
that resounding and ungraceful kiss at the hospital gate. I have heard
Bert shout "Mother!" from a hundred yards off, when he spied her coming
through the gate. No false shame there! No smug "good form" in that--nor
in the time-honoured jest which follows: "And 'ave you remembered to
bring me a bottle of beer, mother?" (Of course visitors are not allowed
to introduce alcohol into the hospital--otherwise I am afraid there is
no doubt that mother would have obliged.)

In one of our wards we harboured, for a while, a costermonger. This
coster, an entertaining and plucky creature who had to have a leg
amputated, received no callers on visiting day: his own relatives were
dead and he and his wife had separated. "Couldn't 'it it orf," he
explained, and with laudable impartiality added, "Married beneath 'er,
she did, w'en she married me." As the lady was herself a coster, it was
plain that here, as in other grades of society, there are degrees,
conventions and barriers which may not be lightly overstepped. "Sister,"
however, thought that the patient should inform his wife that he had
lost his leg, and prevailed on him to send her a letter to that effect.
A few days later he was asked,

"Well, did you write and tell your wife you had lost a leg?"

"Yus."

"I suppose she's answered? What has she said?"

"Said 'm a liar!"

Her retort had neither disconcerted nor offended him. He was a
philosopher--and, like so many of his kind, a laughing philosopher. When
he was sufficiently recovered from his operation to get about on
crutches he was the wag of the ward. He took a special delight in those
practical jokes which are invented by patients to tease the nurses, and
devoted the most painstaking ingenuity to their preparation. It was he
who found a small hole in the lath-and-plaster wall which separates the
ward from the ward's kitchen. Through this hole a length of cotton was
passed and tied to the handle of a mug on the kitchen shelf. At this
period, owing to the Zeppelin raids, only the barest minimum of light
was allowed, and the night nurse, when she entered the kitchen, went
into almost complete darkness. No sooner was she in the kitchen and
fumbling for what she required than a faint noise--that of the cup being
twitched by the cotton leading to the mischievous coster's bed--arose on
the shelf and convinced her that she was in the p