“How are you feeling, Trevor?”
“Nicely, thank you, Sister.”
“Glad to be in Blighty again?”
Doggie smiled.
“Good old Blighty!”
“Leg hurting you?”
“A bit, Sister,” he replied with a little grimace.
“It’s bound to be stiff after the long journey, but we’ll soon fix it up for you.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said politely.
The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean sheet around his shoulders and gave himself up to the luxury of bed—real bed. The morning sunlight poured through the open windows, attended by a delicious odour which after a while he recognized as the scent of the sea. Where he was he had no notion. He had absorbed so much of Tommy’s philosophy as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the night before, after much travel in ambulances by land and sea. If he had been a walking case, he might have taken more interest in things; but the sniper’s bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite of being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he had suffered great pain and longed for nothing and thought of nothing but a permanent resting-place. Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have seen no cleaner, whiter, brighter place in the world than this airy ward, swept by the sea-breeze. He counted seven beds besides his own. On a table running down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas and a bowl of roses. He thought there was never in the world so clean and cool a figure as the grey-clad nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap.