here you are Sonnie,
it's almost finished...."

When I rolled back the blanket it gave me a shock to see how young his
feet were--clean and thin, with the big toe curling up and the little
toes curling back.

"Will you brush my hair?" he managed to say to me, and when I had
finished: "This is a pretty ward...."

It isn't, but I am glad it seems so to him.

The boy is at his worst. Whenever we come near him he lifts his eyes and
asks, "What are you going to do now?"

But to whatever we do he submits with a terrible docility.

Lying there propped on his pillow, with his small yellow face staring
down the ward, he is all the centre of my thoughts; I am preoccupied
with the mystery that is in his lungs.

Five days ago he was walking on his legs: five days, and he is on the
edge of the world--to-night looking over the edge.

There is no shell, no mark, no tear.... The attack comes from within.

The others in the ward are like phantoms.

When I say to-morrow, "How is the boy?" what will they say?

The sun on the cobwebs lights them as it lights the telephone-wires
above. The cocks scream from every garden.

To-day the sky is like a pale egg-shell, and aeroplanes from the two
aerodromes are droning round the hill.

I think from time to time, "Is he alive?"

Can one grow used to death? It is unsafe to think of this....

For if death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is
poisoned.

His mother buys a cake every day and brings it at tea-time, saying, "For
the Sisters' tea...."

It is a bribe, dumbly offered, more to be on the safe side of every bit
of chance than because she really believes it can make the slightest
difference.

Now that I have time to think of it, her little action hurts me, but
yesterday I helped to eat it with pleasure because one is hungry and the
margarine not the best.

Aches and pains....
Pains and aches....

I don't know how to get home up the long hill....

Measles....

(Unposted.)

"DEAR SISTER,--Four more days before they will let me out of bed....
Whatever I promise to a patient in future I shall do, if I have to wear
a notebook hanging on my belt.

"By which you will see that I am making discoveries!

"The quality of _expectation_ in a person lying horizontally is wrought
up to a high pitch. One is always expecting something. Generally it is
food; three times a day it is the post; oftener it is the performance of
some promis