An inspecting general, pausing at his bed this morning, said: "A dairyman, are you? Frightened of horses, are you? Then what do you do about the cows?"
He was pleased with his own joke, and the dairyman smiled too, uncomprehendingly, his eyebrows shooting up and down like swallows' wings. Such jokes mean nothing to him; he is where no joke but his own will ever please him any more....
Palmer doesn't like sitting near him, but since it is too much trouble to move he allows it—poor Palmer, who has a piece of metal somewhere in his brain and is never seen without one long hand to his aching head. He said to me yesterday when I asked him which convalescent home he was going to, "It doesn't matter. We both go to the same kind before long...." jerking his thumb at the dairyman. As for the latter, there surely can be no escape, but for Palmer....
"They won't take it out; too risky. Seen my X-ray picture?"
"No."
"You look at it. Right in the middle of the brain. Seems funny that if I say I'm willing to risk it, why they shouldn't be."
"You're willing to risk it?"
"I'm only nineteen! What's the good of my head to me! I can't remember the name of the last hospital I was at...."
Ah, these hurried conversations sandwiched between my duties, when in four sentences the distilled essence of bitterness is dropped into my ear!