creen removed from him.

Far up the ward the Sister was working by a bed. Ryan, the man with his
nose gone, was lying high on five or six pillows, slung in his position
by tapes and webbing passed under his arms and attached to the bedposts.
He lay with his profile to me--only he has no profile, as we know a
man's. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding
lips--the nose, the left eye, gone.

He was breathing heavily. They don't know yet whether he will live.

When a man dies they fetch him with a stretcher, just as he came in;
only he enters with a blanket over him, and a flag covers him as he
goes out. When he came in he was one of a convoy, but every man who can
stand rises to his feet as he goes out. Then they play him to his
funeral, to a grass mound at the back of the hospital.

It takes all sorts to make a hospital.

For instance, the Visitors....

There is the lady who comes in to tea and wants to be introduced to
every one as though it was a school-treat.

She jokes about the cake, its scarcity or its quantity, and makes a lot
of "fun" about two lumps of sugar.

When she is at her best the table assumes a perfect and listening
silence--not the silence of the critic, but the silence of the absorbed
child treasuring every item of talk for future use. After she goes the
joy of her will last them all the evening.

There is the lady who comes in to tea and, sitting down at the only
unlaid table, cries, "Nurse! I have no knife or plate or cup; and I
prefer a glass of boiling water to tea. And would you mind sewing this
button on my glove?"

There is the lady who comes in and asks the table at large: "I wonder if
any one knows General Biggens? I once met him...."

Or: "You've been in Gallipoli? Did you run across my young cousin, a
lieutenant in the...? Well, he was only there two days or so, I
suppose...." exactly as though she was talking about Cairo in the
season.

To-day there was the Limit.

She sat two paces away from where I sit to pour out tea. Her face was
kind, but inquisitive, with that brown liver-look round the eyes and a
large rakish hat. She comes often, having heard of him through the
_padre_, to see a Canadian whom she doesn't know and who doesn't want to
see her.

From two places away I heard her voice piping up: "Nurse, excuse my
asking, but is your cap a regulation one, like all the others?"

I looked up, and all the tea I was pouring poured over the edge.