“He says he would like a little milk,” said the lady.

And then we drove off.

Monday

It was somewhere about ten o’clock Monday morning. The sister had just finished dressing my arm; the doctor had poked it about; now it lay cool and quiet along by my side. I had not slept that night again, except with morphia. I still felt extraordinarily tired, but was very comfortable. I watched the tall sister in blue with the white headdress that reminded me of a nun’s cap. She was so strong and quiet, and seemed to know that my hand always wanted support at the wrist when she lifted my arm. I did not want to talk, just to lie.

Suddenly I realised that my head was no longer buzzing. I knew that I should sleep to-night—at last! My body relaxed: the tension suddenly melted away.

“Hurrah!” I thought, “I have not got to move, or think, or decide—and I can just lie for hours, for days.”

At last I was out of the grip of war.

CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSION

It was a slumbrous afternoon in September. My wound had healed up a month ago, and I was lazily convalescent at my aunt’s house in one of the most beautiful parts of Kent. The six soldiers who were also convalescent there were down in the hop-garden. For hop-picking was in full swing. I was sitting in a deck-chair with Don Quixote on my knees; but I was not reading. I had apparently broken the offensive power of the army of midges by making a brilliant counter-attack with a pipe of Chairman. The sun blazed mercilessly on the croquet-lawn; the balls were lying all together round one hoop: for there was a golf-croquet tournament in progress, and the mallets stood about against various hoops; one very tidy and proper mallet was standing primly in the stand at one corner. My chair was well sited under the cool shade of a large mulberry tree, in whose thick lofty branches the wind rustled with a delicious little sigh; sometimes a regular little gust would send the boughs swishing, and then a little rain of red and white mulberries would plop on to the grass, and strike the summer-house roof with a smart patter. On the grass-bank at the side of the lawn, by a blazing border of orange and red nasturtiums, a black cat was squatting with tail slowly waving to and fro, watching a fine large tabby that was sniffing at the nasturtiums in a nonchalant manner. They were the best of friends, playing that most interesting of all games, war.