d a couple of small chops or a mess of meat-shreds and bubble and
squeak. She stirs and chatters; she holds forth on the baby's beauty
and goodness, its health, its father's love of it--and, in short, she
talks to us as if we were delighted to see her and her baby. Tony's
good manners triumph comically over his desire to get his cup o' tay
and put away an hour up over. (He likes to take every chance of making
up for wakeful nights at sea.) We all wish she would go quickly.
Meanwhile, we feign an interest in what blousy, skirt-gaping,
slop-slippered, enthusiastic maternity has to say.

And when she does go, it is with a most joyful haste that we move the
kettle to the very hottest part of the fire.

3

The family hubbub over Tommy's stay in the Plymouth Eye Infirmary has
hardly died down yet. Recognizing with uncommon good sense that his
double squint would bar him from the Navy or Army (he shows an
inclination towards the latter), Mrs Widger took him to Plymouth; and
on hearing that an operation would cure him, she did not hesitate, did
not bring him home to think about it; she left him there. Then.... What
a buzz! The child is to return very thin. Mrs Widger's cousin declares
loudly that she would rather lead her boy about blind (he squints
excessively) than let him go to one o' they places. Tony says, "Aye!
they may feed 'en on food of a better quality like, after the rate, but
he won't get done like he is at home." Several times daily he wants to
know how long they will keep Tommy there, and when Mrs Widger replies,
six weeks, he asks in a woe-begone voice: "Do 'ee think 'er'll know his
dad when 'er comes home again?"

All of which is easy to laugh at.

No doubt hospitals are a godsend to the poor, immediately if not
ultimately. At the same time, it cannot be said that the prejudice
against them is wholly unreasonable. Poor people declare that they are
starved in hospital, and it is, in fact, now recognized in dietetics
that comparatively innutritious food, eaten with gusto, is better
assimilated than the most scientifically chosen but unpalatable
nutriment. A man, a poor man especially, can be half starved or at all
events much thinned, on good food, who would do well on the habitual
coarse fare that he enjoys. His life is a long adventure in a land
where every other turning leads to starvation, but his adventurousness
seldom extends to new sorts of food.

[Sidenote: _HOSPITALS_]

No one is so depressed b