atient seriously ill. It is impossible to imagine
war-hospital patients acting inconsiderately towards a distressed
comrade. This observation renders all the more amusing the scandalised
concern which I once beheld on the demure physiognomy of a visiting
clergyman when he gathered the drift of certain allusions to a case on
the Danger List.

The name of the Danger List explains itself. When a patient is put on
the Danger List, his relatives are sent for and may be with him whether
it is the visiting afternoon or not. (If they come from the provinces
they are presented with a railway pass and, if poor, are allotted
lodgings near the hospital, a grant being made to them from our
Benevolent Fund.) For the information of the V.A.D.'s who answer
visitors' questions in the Enquiry Bureau at the main entrance to the
hospital, a copy of the Danger List hangs there, and it is on record
that an awestruck child, seeing this column of patients' names, and
reading the heading, asked, "What does 'Danger List' mean? Does it mean
that it's dangerous to go near them?" Now in Ward C 22 a patient, a
cockney, was on the Danger List--which circumstance availed nothing to
depress his spirits. In spite of considerable pain, he poked fun at the
prospect of his own imminent demise, and was himself the chief offender
against the edict of quietness which "Sister" had issued for her ward.
He _would_ talk; and he _would_ talk about undertakers, post-mortems,
epitaphs and the details of a military funeral. "That there top note of
the Last Post on the bugle doesn't 'arf sound proper," he said--a
verdict which anyone who has heard this beautiful and inspired fanfare,
which is the farewell above a soldier's grave, and which ends on a
soaring treble, will endorse. "But," he went on, "if the bugler's 'ad a
drop o' somethin' warm on the way to the cemetery, that there top note
always reminds me of a 'iccup. An' if 'e 'iccups over me, I shall wanter
spit in 'is eye, blimey if I won't."

This persiflage had been going on for a couple of days and getting to be
more and more elaborate and allusive, infecting the entire ward, so
that the fact that the man was on the Danger List had become a kind of
catchword amongst his fellows. Entered, in all innocence, the clergyman.
("The very bloke to put me up to all the tricks!"--from the irreverent
one.) At the same moment a walking patient, also a cockney, who had been
reading a newspaper, gave vent to a cry of feign