A new Sister on to-night ... very severe. We had to make the beds like white cardboard. I wonder what she thinks of me.
Mr. Pettitt (who really is going to-morrow) wandered up into the ward and limped near me. "Sister...." he began. He will call me "Sister." I frowned at him. The new Sister glanced at him and blinked.
He was very persistent. "Sister," he said again, "do you think I can have a word with you?"
"Not now," I whispered as I hurried past him.
"Oh, is that so?" he said, as though I had made an interesting statement, and limped away, looking backwards at me. I suppose he wants to say good-bye.
He sat beside Mr. Wicks's bed (Mr. Wicks who is paralysed) and looked at me from time to time with that stare of his which contains so little offence.
It is curious to think that I once saw Mr. Wicks on a tennis-lawn, walking across the grass.... Mr. Wicks, who will never put his foot on grass again, but, lying in his bed, continues to say, as all Tommies say, "I feel well in meself."
So he does; he feels well in himself. But he isn't going to live, all the same.
Still his routine goes on: he plays his game of cards, he has his joke: "Lemonade, please, nurse; but it's not from choice!"
When I go to clear his ash-tray at night I always say, "Well, now I've got something worth clearing at last!"