of my swallowing
that man's filthy medicine when he doesn't know what's the matter with me?

I hate everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which
rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When
in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still
billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and
German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. _Two Hundred German
eider-downs!_

The firelight flickers weirdly about the room and I try to count the
shadows. But before I begin I know the answer--TWO HUNDRED.

I drift into a nightmare of Two Hundred elusive cabbages which I am
endeavouring to plant in my new allotment, where a harsh fate forces me to
dig and _dig_ and DIG, and, as a natural consequence, also to ache and
_ache_ and ACHE.

PHASE II.

I can stand up with assistance from the bed-post and totter feebly to an
arm-chair by the fire, where I sit in a dressing-gown and weep. What for? I
couldn't say, except that it seems a fit and proper thing to do.

I am still of opinion that I am not long for this world, and my favourite
occupation at present is counting up the number of wreaths that I might
justifiably expect to have sent to my funeral. I don't tell my nurse, who
would immediately try to "cheer me up" by talking to me or giving me a
magazine to look at. And I would _much_ rather count wreaths. The Smiths
probably would not be able to afford one....

My thoughts are distracted by the sudden apparition of a little meal. I
begin to take an interest in these little meals, which are of such frequent
occurrence that I am reduced to tears again, this time at the thought of
the extra expense I am causing. And all for nothing. Why don't they save
the money for wreaths?

The doctor comes while I am swallowing my egg, miserably yet with a certain
gusto, and I dry my eyes hastily as I hear him bounding up the stairs.

"Hullo," he calls out before he is well through the door, "how are we
to-day, eh? Beginning to sit up and take notice? I think we'll change your
medicine."

"_I_ think," I remark resignedly, "that it will be best for someone to dig
a hole and bury me."

"Jolly good idea," he agrees heartily. "In fact why not do it to all of us?
Please the Germans so too. But it can't be done, you know--there's a
shortage of grave-diggers."

Heartless brute!

* * * * *

[Illustrati