!

"Yesterday was visiting-day, and when the friends of the patients come
even an hospital can have its humours. They try to sneak in little
dainties which may be delicious in themselves, but are deadly poison to
the people they are intended for. Then we have to search under the
bedclothes of the patients, and even feel the pockets of their visitors.
The mother of my little boy came yesterday, and I noticed such a large
protuberance at her bosom under her ulster that I began to foresee
another operation. It was only a brick of currant cake, paved with lemon
peel. I hauled it out and moved round like a cloud of thunder and
lightning. But she began to cry and to say she had made it herself for
Johnnie, and then--well, didn't I just get a wigging from the Sister,
though!

"But I don't mind what happens here, for I am in London, and to be in
London is to live, and to live is to be in London. I've not seen much of
it yet, having only two hours off duty every day--from ten to twelve--and
then all I can do is to make little dips into the park and the district
round about, like a new pigeon with its wings clipped. But I watch the
great new world from my big box up here, and see the carriages in the
park and the people riding on horseback. They have a new handshake in
London. You lift your hand to the level of your shoulder, and then waggle
horizontally as if you had put your elbow out; and when you begin to
speak you say, 'I--er--' as if you had got the mumps. But it is
beautiful! The sound of the traffic is like music, and I feel like a
war-horse that wants to be marching to it. How delightful it is to be
young in a world so full of loveliness! And if you are not very ugly it's
none the worse.

"All hospital nurses are just now basking in the sunshine of a
forthcoming ball. It is to be given at Bartimaeus's Hospital, where they
have a lecture theatre larger than the common, and the dancing there is
for once to be to a happier tune. All the earth is to be present--all the
hospital earth--and if I could afford to array myself in the necessary
splendour, I should show this benighted London what an absolute angel
Glory is! But then my first full holiday is to be on the 24th, when I
expect to be out from 10 A. M. until 10 P. M. I am nearly crazy whenever
I think of it, and when the time comes to make my first plunge into
London, I know I shall hold my breath exactly as if I were taking a
header off Creg Malin rocks.... Glory."