In all honesty the hospital is a convent, and the men in it my brothers.
This for months on end....
For all that, now and then some one raises his eyes and looks at me; one day follows another and the glance deepens.
"Charme de l'amour qui pourrait vous peindre!"
Women are left behind when one goes into hospital. Such women as are in a hospital should be cool, gentle; anything else becomes a torment to the "prisoner."
For me, too, it is bad; it brings the world back into my eyes; duties are neglected, discomforts unobserved.
But there are things one doesn't fight.
"Charme de l'amour...." The ward is changed! The eldest Sister and the youngest Sister are my enemies; the patients are my enemies—even Mr. Wicks, who lies on his back with his large head turned fixedly my way to see how often I stop at the bed whose number is 11.
Last night he dared to say, "It's not like you, nurse, staying so much with that rowdy crew...." The gallants ... I know! But one among them has grown quieter, and his bed is No. 11.