"Yes."
How will he celebrate it? I would give a lot to know what will pass in his mind. For I don't yet understand this importance they attach to such an anniversary. One and all, they know the exact hour and minute on which their bit of metal turned them for home.
Sometimes a man will whisper, "Nurse...." as I go by the bed; and when I stop I hear, "In ten minutes it will be a twelvemonth!" and he fixes his eyes on me.
What does he want me to respond? I don't know whether I should be glad or sorry that he got it. I can't imagine what he thinks of as the minute ticks. For I can see by his words that the scene is blurred and no longer brings back any picture. "Did you crawl back or walk?"
"I ... walked." He is hardly sure.
I know that for some of them, for Waker, that moment at two o'clock in the morning changed his whole career. From that moment his arm was paralysed, the nerves severed; from that moment football was off, and with it his particular ambition. And football, governing a kingdom, or painting a picture—a man's ambition is his ambition, and when it is wiped out his life is changed.
But he knows all that, he has had time to think of all that. What, then, does this particular minute bring him?
They think I know; for when they tell me in that earnest voice that the minute is approaching they take for granted that I too will share some sacrament with them.