I walked briskly up the hill, and presently stepped on to the pavement; but at the edge of the asphalt, where tufted grass should grow, something crackled and hissed under my feet. Under the torchlight the unnatural grass was white and brittle with rime, fanciful as a stage fairy scene, and the railings beyond it glittered too.
I slid in the road as I turned down the drive; a sheet of ice was spread where the leaky pipe is, and the steps up to the house door were slippery.
But oh, the honeysuckle and the rose-trees...! Bush, plant, leaf, stem, rimed from end to end. The garden was a Bond Street jeweller's!
Perhaps the final chapter on Mr. Pettitt....
In the excitement of the ward I had almost forgotten him; he is buried in the Mess, in the days when I lived on the floor below.
To-night, as I was waiting by the open hatch of the kitchen for my tray to be filled with little castles of lemon jelly, the hot blast from the kitchen drawing stray wisps of hair from beneath my cap, I saw the familiar limping figure—a figure bound up with my first days at the hospital, evoking a hundred evenings at the concerts, in the dining-room. I felt he had been away, but I didn't dare risk a "So you're back!"
He smiled, blushed, and limped past me.
Upstairs in the ward, as I was serving out my jellies, he arrived in the doorway, but, avoiding me, hobbled round the ward, visiting every bed but the one I was at at the moment. Then he went downstairs again.
I passed him on the stairs. He can't say he didn't have his opportunity, for I even stopped with my heavy tray and spoke to him.
Half an hour later he was back in the ward again (not his ward), and this time he found the courage of hysteria. There in the middle of the ward, under the glaring Christmas lights, with the eyes of every interested man in every bed glued upon us, he presented me with a fan wrapped in white paper: "A little present I bought you, nurse." I took it, eyes sizzling and burning holes in my shoulders, and stammered my frantic thanks.