We got outside the town and had a large open space to cross. Some horses in the distance were neighing, and, of course, mine answered them shrilly and fiercely, and he tried to be off at a furious gallop to get another little boxing match. This I was able to put a stop to, fortunately, for the ground was much broken up and very slippery. Having nothing better to do, therefore, he reared and kicked again. We reached the Hospital at last, and, with shaking knees and a thankful heart, I dismounted.
The Hospital in the Winter.
There were a great many sick soldiers at the Hospital, some sixty or seventy. I was not yet strong enough to attend to them all, and I chose out about a dozen who were very ill.
Some of them were mere lads, and there they lay coughing and panting with acute inflammation of the lungs. It was in times like this that I missed so frightfully the well-appointed hospitals and the women nurses of England. The soldier attendants did their best, no doubt, but very few showed any sympathy or gentleness with the sick. In many of the cases it was necessary for the patient to sit up for me to listen to the sounds of the chest. In England the nurse slips her arm under the shoulders and head of the patient and helps him up. Here a curt “sit up” was all. One or two could not do it, and I had to lift them.
Coming away I decided that the Armenian should ride the “fool horse” and I would take his. He said:—
“Oh, yes, sir, I can ride him, but I ’fraid we make late for your lunch. Better this—you take mine, I take soldier’s horse. Other horse come afterwards. In my o-pinion we get home soon this way.”
“Very well,” I said, “I can’t ride him home; it is too much.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, “it is three much! a little you not strong, and he very fool horse.”
It was a long time before I could make him believe it was “too much, and not two much.”
