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When I consider it in broad daylight, I have a heap of enjoyments, small and insignificant, but perfectly unclouded enjoyments.
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Yes, here I am laid up with measles—at my age—a fiery rash, and everything else. Perhaps I shall get whooping-cough next? It would be much the best plan if one could have every childish complaint at once and have done with it. It is boring in this magnificent carbolic-scented clinic; but the nursing is good, and it is said to be healthy to be bored. I always fancied the much spoken about self-sacrifice nurses to be an old wives’ tale.
In the room next mine, there is the most passionate little monster of a boy nine months old, and no one would believe it, but all the nurses are willing to give up their sorely needed night’s rest for his sake. I, for my part, wish he was in a hot place.
And then they actually ask me if I wouldn’t like to have him “in my bed for a little.” Heaven protect me and my well-conditioned intellect! Oh! I pity the poor women who have several little children at the same time! I’d like to know how many mothers really feel for their children—because it is their children.
Richard will get it with that wonder of a child. He boasts about his teeth, but he says nothing about the pain getting those teeth has cost him.
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Yesterday I had a visit from a convalescent, who went round paying visits to the patients who were still lying in bed. I shall make friends with her. She amuses me. How well I understood that there can be a certain charm in studying bacteria and bacilli—small causes, huge results.
Frankly, I thought at first that she had been in a reformatory. There was something about her that gave the impression that she must have been under restraint. I was quite prepared that she would confess to having committed some crime. But no, that wasn’t it.