ttle bit of a man, so cheery
and bright, who had made a marvellous recovery, but was not yet well
enough to be moved. Everywhere was that peculiar smell which seems
inseparable from typhoid wards in spite, or perhaps because of, the many
disinfectants. We left by the door at the end of Salle III and once in
the sunlight again, I heaved a sigh of relief; for frankly I thought the
three typhoid Salles the most depressing places on earth. They were
dark, haunting, and altogether horrible. "Well," said Sergeant Wicks
cheerfully, "what do you think of the typhoid Wards? Splendid aren't
they? You should have seen them at first." As I made no reply, she
rattled gaily on, "Well, I hope you will find the work interesting when
you come to us as a pro. to-morrow." I gasped. "Am I to leave the
_blesses_, then?" was all I could feebly ask--"Why, yes, didn't they
tell you?"--and she was off before I could say anything more.

* * * * *

When one goes to work in France one can't pick and choose, and the next
morning saw me in the typhoid wards which soon I learnt to love, and
which I found so interesting that I hardly left them from that time
onwards, except for "trench duty."

I was in Salle I at first--the less serious cases--and life seemed one
eternal rush of getting "feeds" for the different patients, "doing
mouths," and making "Bengers." All the boiling and heating was done in
one big stove in Salle II. Each time I passed No. 16 I tried not to look
at him, but I always ended in doing so, and each time he seemed to be
thinner and more ethereal looking. He literally went to skin and bone.
He must have been such a splendid man, I longed for him to get better,
but one morning when I passed, the bed was empty and a nurse was
disinfecting the iron bedstead. For one moment I thought he had been
moved. "Where--What?" I asked, disjointedly of the nurse. "Died in the
night," she said briefly. "Don't look like that," and she went on with
her work. No. 16 had somehow got on my mind, I suppose because it was
the first bad typhoid case I had seen, and from the first I had taken
such an interest in him. One gets accustomed to these things in time,
but I never forgot that first shock. In the afternoons the men's
temperatures rose alarmingly, and most of the time was spent in
"blanket-bathing" which is about the most back-aching pastime there is;
but how the patients loved to feel the cool sponges passing over