Mollie finished her three months’ training, and was drafted to a War Hospital in Wales. She came to see me before she went. She was serious and intent.
‘I wish I could do more,’ she said. ‘I hate to be safe, when the others are in danger, don’t you feel that, Helen? I do hope they will send me to the front.’
I said:
‘You are doing much more than I am. You are in it, not outside, like me.’
Mollie said:
‘Yes. I am sorry for you, Helen. It must be terrible for you to be outside, and not able to help. Of course you can’t,’ she added quickly, ‘your work is just as important really, more perhaps,’ and she smiled her delightful smile that was like George’s.
‘I feel,’ she went on earnestly, ‘that I can never do enough, if I worked myself to the bone, when I think what the men out there are going through already; what is waiting for George, and Guy, and Hugo, when they go out. It seems horrible to me to sit safe at home when they go, just nursing in a hospital.’
I said:
‘It will be pretty ghastly in a hospital if the War goes on,’ and I was surprised at myself; I had not thought consciously about the wounded men before.
Mollie shuddered.