"You ought to have spoken to them," said Nurse a little reproachfully, coming to him afterwards. "You ought just to have said a little, Wriford—that's your name, isn't it? I think they'd have let you stay over Christmas if you had. Wouldn't you have liked to stay with us for Christmas?"
"I just want to be alone," said Mr. Wriford.
"I told him," said Nurse, reporting this conversation to Sister later in the day, "I told him that of course he'd had a terrible time, but that he ought really to try not to think so much about himself. You know, when I said that he turned his head right round to me, a thing he never does, and stared at me in the oddest way."
VI
If that was so it remained the only thing that aroused him all the time he was at the Cottage Hospital. Even when the ambulance came over from Pendra Infirmary, and Nurse and Sister tucked him up in it and commended him to the care of the Infirmary nurse who came in the carriage, even then, beyond thanking them quietly, he neither turned his head for a last look nor seemed in any degree distracted from his steady thoughts. He just lay as before, gazing straight before him and thinking, and continued so to lie and think when they got him to bed in the large convalescent ward at the Infirmary.
"Matey," said a husky voice from the bed beside him, "Matey, I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. I'm the oldest sea-captain living, and I've got all me faculties except only me left eye. Can't you move, Matey? I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. I'll show you, Matey."
A sharp call down the ward. "Father! Get back into bed this minute, Father! I never did! What are you thinking about? Get back this minute, Father!"
The oldest sea-captain living objected querulously:
"I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper."
"Yes, and I'll take it away from you if you don't lie still."