The doctor was very hot and tired after his long visit of inspection, but highly satisfied with the number of notes he had made, and the meal passed off in animated conversation. When it was over, Dr. Franks and Hansie went through the long rows of tents in her ward—her "prize" tents she called them—and the doctor seemed much struck by the extreme poverty and misery of the inmates. In one tent two little boys were dying, and the distracted mother, when she heard the magic word "doctor," implored him to save them. She was a widow and these children were all she had. He knelt beside them and examined them with his strong and gentle hands, shaking his head. There was no hope.
"Your ward is in a shocking state. But things were not as bad in the dispensary and store-rooms as you made out last night," he said to her on their way to the station.
There was a touch of reproof in the kind voice.
"You saw the small supply which is always kept for inspection, doctor," she answered. "It is always there and is not touched when the stores run out."
His face wore a troubled look, but he said no more.
When they parted at the station he said he would report on his visit, to the Governor, and Hansie laughingly replied that she would report too.
"For you are a Briton and I am a Boer. General Maxwell must have two reports."
She found the Governor next day in the friendliest of moods and evidently satisfied when she thanked him for the improvements in her ward.
He told her that the Commandant, who had been at Irene when first she came there, was going round the country to inspect all the Camps and to write reports for him. Seeing the look of intense dissatisfaction on her face, he asked whether she did not think that Commandant —— would do it well.
"No, indeed," she replied. "I think I would do it a great deal better. Will you let me go round to all the Camps also, to write reports for you?"