'I am very well,' said Selwyn haltingly. 'I hope my arrival did not disturb any of you last night.'
At the sound of his carefully nuanced Bostonian accent there was a violent dumb-play of smoothing the hair and arranging the coats of pyjamas, while one Tommy placed a penny in his eye in lieu of a monocle.
'I was 'oping,' said the Cockney, with a solemn wink to the gathering, 'as 'ow Number 26 would be took by a toff, and, blime, if it ain't! It were gettin' blinkin' lonesome for me with only Jock 'ere and Frenchy opposite, who ain't bad blokes in their wy, but orful crude for my likin'.'
'Where did it hit ye?' asked the Scot encouragingly.
'On the head,' said Selwyn, pointing to his bandage.
'Mon, mon, that's apt to be dangerous.'
'Nah then!' cried the Cockney, reaching for his temperature-chart, 'we'll open the mornink proper with the 'Ymn of 'Ate. In cise you don't know the piece, m'lud, you can read it off your temperacher-ticket. Steady now—everybody got a full breath? Gow!'
With great zest all the patients who were able to sit up broke into a discordant jumble of scales as they followed the course of their temperatures up and down the chart. Gradually, one by one, they fell out and resumed their breakfast, until the Scotsman was the only one singing.
'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge behind him, as if it were a copy of Handel's Messiah.
The last note had hardly died away when a violent controversy broke out between a pair of Australian soldiers on one side and almost the entire ward on the other. The thing had started by one of the Anzacs venturing the modest opinion that if Britain had had a million Australian troops, they, the present gathering, would be 'hoch, hoching' in Berlin (apparently a delightful prospect) instead of being cooped up in a London hospital.