I wonder how much I really have changed in the year? a good deal, I'm sure. I remember that at first I used to laugh to myself over the 'class distinctions,' such as I have just been writing about; that was when I was fresh from the mountain, where every one called every one else by his or her first name—and also when I was in the lowest class myself. Once I was even bold enough to tell Dr. Bentley that I thought they were foolish, but he reminded me—as Donald had—that we are an army here, and that in an army a private can't eat and sleep with a captain, or a captain with a general. Now I don't mind the rules and regulations at all, for I have learned the lesson of discipline, and I know that, even if we do have to be strict in our conduct toward the older nurses and the doctors, we are all—from the senior surgeon down to the lowliest probationer—really one in a great spiritual fellowship, as the prayerbook says, and all working together in the same great cause."
August 19th, 1916.
"Little diary, I have been neglecting you lately, but now you and I must collect our thoughts, for we have got to write a long, long letter to Donald and tell him all about the vacation—the first that I ever had.
It was the first time that I was ever really at the seashore, too, except that one afternoon in June when Dr. Bentley took me down to Nahant in his car. Weren't the Thayers dear to have me as their guest at beautiful Manchester-by-the-Sea? Ethel (I wonder if Donald will be pleased to know that his real sister has asked me to call her by her first name?) insisted that they did it for my own sake, but I know that it was really on his account. They were two weeks of wonder for me; but I wish that he might have been there. How they all miss him—even Dr. Bentley. I think that there is nothing finer than such a friendship between two men. Why, he even calls on Donald's family still. He came to Manchester twice in the fortnight that I was there. Dr. Bentley wants me to call him 'Philip,' when we are not in the hospital, and I do ... sometimes. It seems perfectly natural, even though he is much older than I—he is over thirty; but I suppose that is because at home we called almost every one by his first name. (We are rambling, little diary. I don't believe that Donald would be particularly interested in the fact that I call Dr. Bentley, 'Philip.')
He will be interested to know how the sea impressed me, though, and again I find myself wholly at a loss for words to express my feelings. It was so overwhelming in its grandeur and far-stretching expanse; so beautiful in its never-ending procession of colors; so terrible in its might, when aroused. I have seen it asleep as peacefully as one of my babies (all the hospital babies are children of my heart), and I have seen it in anger, like a brutal giant. I wish that I had not seen its latter mood, for, when it caught up the little boat that had been torn from the moorings, and hurled her again and again against the rocks until there was not a plank of her left unbroken—while the wind shrieked its horrid glee—my growing love for it was turned to fear. No, I can never care for the ocean as I do for my mountains. I cannot forget that it was the waters which stole my dearest treasures from me.
Still, the memory of that storm is nearly lost in the abounding happiness of those two weeks, and the third one which I spent with my Gertrude Merriman, who stole it from her many cases to be with me. When I set down each little incident of them in black and white, as I mean to in my letter to Don, they will appear commonplace enough, I'm afraid; but I shall tell him that their story is written on my heart in letters of gold and many colors.
He pretends to be interested in every foolish little thing that I have done, but I don't suppose that he would care to read about all the new dresses I have bought. I never realized before that a girl could get so much pleasure out of buying pretty things, and I am afraid that he would scold me if he knew how many leaves I have used out of my checkbook. Not that they have been all for clothes, little diary. I did not realize how much I had given to war charities, and I was a little frightened this morning when I made up my balance.
But I cannot help giving for the poor French and Belgian babies. It somehow seems as though I were giving the money to Don to spend for me."