I skip before him blithely that he may not fail to observe my unbounded energy. In fact, I haven’t even said there is to be a dance. I feel that I am going to that dance, though I haven’t mentioned my conviction to the Major. Our Matron has been over to see me, and she mentioned casually that there is to be a dance in our mess Thursday night. I have been at the Major again to let me go home. One is left with a vague sleepy sense of desolation which is gradually overcome by the thought of how warm and comfy bed is, and isn’t somebody coming back to put out that light?īut today there is no one to steal my claret. The dim light dark figures dressing hurriedly with cold awkward fingers whispered conversations hasty searches for forgotten treasures a last Cheerio, old girl! The best o’ luck! Then they are gone, for always. There’s something depressing about an evac. I was wakened about two o’clock this morning by the preparations for the evacuation and lay watching, a little irritated by the subdued excitement. The years before I came to France are only something I dreamed. How strange this life is! Yet it is the only life which seems real to me now. THERE WAS AN EVACUATION last night, and Marston was sent to Blighty. They grow more and more slippery, and the Major puffs anxiously as he lumbers over them. The floors haven’t given up the battle, however. It groans a little-the furniture, I mean-when he sits on it, but I suppose it feels that it is too late to do anything else about it now. All that I know about this is that it is beautiful, and that it can’t like being sat upon by a fat British Major with a bald head, steel-rimmed spectacles, tobacco-stained whiskers, and asthma. I wish I knew something about period furniture. I am allowed to dress and wander about the chateau, but I may not go out of doors. I HAVE PREVAILED UPON the Major to let me get up. I must manage somehow to get back to camp. And when I think of the boys coming down wounded and needing all the nurses in the world to take care of them. Not, as I said before, that I desire to work. The real root of the matter is that the spring offensive will soon begin, and unless I get out of here I shall miss it. And it isn’t that I have any passion for work. It was quite interesting at first, and it is certainly restful. I don’t even mind having flu and trench fever. If I were to suggest it, she would be delighted to scream with me. ![]() Out of the tail of my eye I can see that Marston, the Canadian nurse in the next bed to me, has stolen my hot claret and is now drinking it under the bedclothes. The Major would be sent for, and he would hang over my bed and breathe on me and say, Hmm. ![]() It would disturb all these good sisters from their naps and their knitting. It would be so un-English and such awfully bad form.
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