He has seen many dead in France and snapped his fingers at them, but I agree with him that to die of tuberculosis in the backwaters of the war isn't the same thing.
It's dreary; he thought how dreary it was as he lay awake in the night.
But then he has neurasthenia....
Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery! If one ceases for one instant to pity Mr. Wicks he becomes an awful bore. Some days, when the sun is shining, I hear his grieving tenor voice all over the ward, his legendary tale of a wrong done him in his promotion. The men are kind to him and say "Old man," but Mr. Gray, who lies in the next bed to him, is drained of everything except resignation. I heard him say yesterday, "You told me that before...."
We had a convoy last night.
There was a rumour at tea-time, and suddenly I came round a corner on an orderly full of such definite information as:
"There's thirty officers, nurse; an 'undred an' eighty men."
I flew back to the bunk with the news, and we sat down to our tea wondering and discussing how many each ward would get.
Presently the haughty Sister from downstairs came to the door: she held her thin, white face high, and her rimless glasses gleamed, as she remarked, overcasually, after asking for a hot-water bottle that had been loaned to us: