s very low, he gave way to a little fretting to me,
he never, I am convinced, let fall one querulous word in the presence of
his wife. She sat by her husband's side, and when things were at their
worst the two said naught. The wife numbly watched her Bill's face,
turning now and then to glance at the activities of little Bill with his
engine, or to smile her thanks to the patients who sometimes came and
gave the child pickaback rides. When I intruded, I knew I was
interrupting the communings of a loving and happily married pair; and
the "slangings" of each other which signalised Bill's recovery and his
wife's relief, did nothing to shake my certitude that, like many slum
dwellers, they owned a mutual esteem which other couples, of superior
station, might envy.

Personally I have never known a cockney patient who did not evoke
affection; and as a matter of curiosity I have been asking a number of
Sisters whether they liked to have cockneys in their wards. Without a
single exception (and let me say that Sisters are both observant and
critical) the answers have been enthusiastically in the affirmative.

XIII

THE STATION PARTY

An earnest shopman not long ago tried to sell me a pair of
marching-boots, "for use"--as he explained, lest their name should have
misled me--"on the march." Had he said "for use after the war" he might
have been more persuasive. When I told him that marching-boots were no
good to me, it was manifestly difficult for him to conceal his opinion
that, if so, I had no business to flaunt the garb of Thomas Atkins. When
I added that if he could offer me a pair of running-shoes I might
entertain the proposition, his look was a reproach to irreverent
facetiousness.

A grateful country has presented me with one pair of excellent
marching-boots. But a hospital ward is no place in which to go clumping
about in footgear designed to stand hard wear and tear on the
high-roads; and my army boots, after two years, have not yet needed
re-soling. I wore them, it is true, during my period of service with the
Chain Gang, as a squad of outdoor orderlies, engaged in road-making, was
locally called. And I wear them when we have a "C.O.'s Parade"--an
occasion on which naught but officially-provided attire is allowable. It
would take a century of C.O.'s parades, however, to damage boots put on
five minutes before the event and taken off five minutes after: the
parade itself necessitating no sturdier pedestrian