"Good evening, children."
"Good evening, sister."
"Have you been good boys today?"
"The little Canuck has been trying to swipe some of your photographs, sister."
"Oh, the little rascal! Doesn't his face belie his character?" With such light badinage she would make her way through the ward, smoothing a pillow, soothing some poor lad's agony with those wonderful cool hands of the born healer, jokingly chiding a few of us slightly wounded men for making so much of our wounds in order to get a caress from her, but we always got the caress.
One night, in my restlessness, I had completely removed the dressing from my stump, and that wonderful woman had redressed the stump, brushed my hair, or what remained of it at that time, and departed to other duties without even awakening me.
One of the things which most troubled me during the night was the recurrence, regularly for many nights, of a torturing dream, in which I fancied I was being rushed into the fighting again, with my foot hanging on by a shred, and the pain that I felt in my dream, as well as the terror, would cause me to wake up with a frightened shriek, but almost instantly the gentle, cooling hands of my angel nurse would be soothing my aching head, and in a few moments I would be myself again.
The blessed woman seemed to be possessed of a wonderful intuition, for never would I want a glass of lemonade, or some other soothing nourishment, but it was on the locker at my hand before I asked for it.
The attentions showered upon us by visitors were so many and varied that it would take a volume in itself to recount them. Some of them have afforded me a good laugh, more than once. They were all heartfelt and sincere, comical as some of them were, in their desire to do something for us, no matter how small the courtesy might be. Once when careening about on a wheel-chair, amusing the rest of the boys by my antics, the head sister brought in a lady visitor. This lady had befriended a Canadian boy before he went to the front, and she thought the world of him. The lad had been wounded in the same action as myself, and, learning of his being in the hospital at Liverpool, she hastened to try and find him. Incidentally the good lady had some little comfort for every Canadian boy she ran across.
The lady peered at me through her spectacles, and the head sister, noticing her short-sightedness, came to the rescue with the following: