Agahta Christie - An autobiography Part 14

I had by now met Archie's family. His father had been a Judge in the Indian Civil Service, and had had a severe fall from a horse. He became rapidly ill after thatthe fall had affected his brainand had finally died in hospital in England. After some years of widowhood, Archie's mother had remarried William Hemsley. No one could have been kinder to us or more fatherly than he always was. Archie's mother, Peg, came from Southern Ireland, near Cork, and was one of twelve children. She had been staying with her eldest brother, who was in the Indian Medical, when she had met her first husband. She had two boys, Archie and Campbell. Archie had been head of the school at Clifton, and had pa.s.sed fourth into Woolwich: he had brains, resource, audacity. Both boys were in the Army.

Archie broke the news of his engagement to her, and sang my praises in the way that sons are apt to do in describing the girl of their choice. Peg looked at him with a doubtful eye, and said in a rich Irish voice: 'Would she now be one of those girls that's wearing one of these newfangled Peter Pan collars?' Rather uneasily Archie had to admit that I did wear Peter Pan collars. They were rather a feature of the moment. We girls had at last abandoned the high collars to our blouses, which were stiffened by little zigzag bones, one up each side and one at the back, so as to leave red, uncomfortable marks on the neck. A day came when people determined to be daring and achieve comfort. The Peter Pan collar was designed, presumably, from the turned-down collar worn by Peter Pan in Barrie's play. It fitted round the bottom of the neck, was of soft material, had nothing like a bone about it, and was heaven to wear. It could hardly have been called daring. When I think of the reputation for possible fastness that we girls incurred, just by showing the four inches of neck from below the chin, it seems incredible. Looking round and seeing girls in bikinis on the beach now makes one realise how far one has gone in fifty years.

Anyway, I was one of these go-ahead girls who, in 1912, wore a Peter Pan collar.

'And she looks lovely in it,' said the loyal Archie.

'Ah, she would, no doubt,' said Peg. Whatever doubts she may have had about me on account of this, however, she greeted me with extreme kindness, and indeed what I almost thought of as gush. She professed to be so fond of me, so delightedI was just the girl she had wanted for her boy, and so on and so onthat I didn't believe a word of it. The real truth was that she thought her son much too young to marry. She had no particular fault to find with meI could no doubt have been much worse. I might have been a tobacconist's daughter (always accounted a symbol of disaster) or a young divorceethere were some about by thenor even a chorus-girl. Anyway, she doubtless decided that with our prospects the engagement would come to nothing. So she was very sweet to me, and I was slightly embarra.s.sed by her. Archie, true to temperament, was not particularly interested in what she thought of me or I of her. He had the happy attribute of going through life without the least interest in what anyone thought of him or his belongings: his mind was always entirely bent on what he he wanted himself. wanted himself.

So there we were, still engaged, but no nearer getting marriedin fact, rather further off. Promotion did not seem likely to come more quickly in the Flying Corps than anywhere else. Archie had been dismayed to find that he suffered a good deal from sinus trouble when flying a plane. He had a good deal of pain, but carried on. His letters were full of technical accounts of Farman biplanes and Avros: his opinions on the planes that meant more or less certain death for the pilot, and the ones that were pretty steady and ought to develop well. The names of his squadron became familiar to me: Joubert de la Ferte, Brooke-Popham, John Salmon. There was also a wild Irish cousin of Archie's who had by now crashed so many machines that he was more or less permanently grounded.

It seems odd that I don't remember being at all worried about Archie's safety. Flying was dangerousbut then so was hunting, and I was used to people breaking their necks in the hunting field. It was just one of the hazards of life. There was no great insistence on safety then; the slogan 'Safety first' would have been considered rather ridiculous. To be concerned with this new form of locomotion, flying, was glamorous. Archie was one of the first pilots to flyhis pilot's number was, I think, just over the hundred: 105 or 106. I was enormously proud of him.

I think nothing has disappointed me more in my life than the establishment of the aeroplane as a regular method of travel. One had dreamed about it as resembling the flying of a birdthe exhilaration of swooping through the air. But now, when I think of the boredom of getting in an aeroplane and flying from London to Persia, from London to Bermuda, from London to j.a.pancould anything be more prosaic? A cramped box with its narrow seats, the view from the window mostly wings and fuselage, and below you cotton-wool clouds. When you see the earth, it has the flatness of a map. Oh yes, a great disillusionment. s.h.i.+ps can still be romantic. As for trainswhat can beat a train? Especially before the diesels and their smell arrived. A great puffing monster carrying you through gorges and valleys, by waterfalls, past snow mountains, alongside country roads with strange peasants in carts. Trains are wonderful; I still adore them. To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and riversin fact, to see life.

I don't mean that I am not fascinated by the conquering of air by man, by his adventures into s.p.a.ce, possessed of that one gift that other forms of life do not have, the sense of adventure, the unconquerable spirit, and with it couragenot merely the courage of self-defence, which all animals have, but the courage to take your life into your hands and go out into the unknown. I am proud and excited to feel that all this has happened in my lifetime, and I would like to be able to look into the future to see the next steps: one feels they will follow quickly on one another now, with a s...o...b..lling effect.

What will it all end in? Further triumphs? Or possibly the destruction of man by his own ambition? I think not. Man will survive, though possibly only in pockets here and there. There may be some great catastrophebut not all mankind will perish. Some primitive community, rooted in simplicity, knowing of past doings only by hearsay, will slowly build up a civilisation once more.

IX

I don't remember in 1913 having any antic.i.p.ation of war. Naval officers occasionally shook their heads and murmured 'Der Tag', but we had been hearing that for years, and paid no attention. It served as a suitable basis for spy storiesit wasn't real. No nation could be so crazy as to fight another except on the N.W. frontier or some far away spot.

All the same, First Aid and Home Nursing cla.s.ses were popular during 1913, and at the beginning of 1914. We all went to these, bandaged each other's legs and arms, and even attempted to do neat head-bandaging: much more difficult. We pa.s.sed our exams, and got a small printed card to prove our success. So great was female enthusiasm at this time that if any man had an accident he was in mortal terror of ministerng women closing in on him.

'Don't let those First Aiders come near me!' the cry would rise. 'Don't touch me, girls. Don't touch touch me!' me!'

There was one extremely snuffy old man amongst the examiners. With a diabolical smile he laid traps for us. 'Here is your patient,' he would say, pointing to a boy scout prostrate on the ground. 'Broken arm, fractured ankle, get busy on him.' An eager pair, I and another, swooped upon him and trotted out our bandages. We were good at bandagingbeautiful, neat bandages we had practisedcarefully reversing as we went up a leg, so that the whole thing looked deliciously taut and tidy, with a few figure-of-eights thrown in for good measure. In this case, however, we were taken abackthere was to be no neatness or beauty here: stuff was already bulkily wound round the limb. 'Field dressings,' said the old man. 'Put your bandages on top of them; you've nothing else to replace them by, remember.' We bandaged. It was much more difficult to bandage this way, making neat turns and twists. 'Get on with it,' said the old man. 'Use the figure-of-eight: you'll have to come to it in the end. No good trying to go by the text-books and reverse from top to bottom. You've got to keep the dressing on, on, girl, that's the point of it. Now then, the bed is through the hospital doors there.' We picked up our patient, having duly fixed, we hoped, the splints where splints should be fixed, and carried him to the bed. girl, that's the point of it. Now then, the bed is through the hospital doors there.' We picked up our patient, having duly fixed, we hoped, the splints where splints should be fixed, and carried him to the bed.

Then we paused, slightly taken abackneither of us had thought of opening up the bed clothes before arriving with the patient. The old man cackled with glee. 'Ha ha! Haven't thought of everything, have you, young ladies? Ha haalways see your bed is ready for your patient before you start carrying him there.' I must say that, humiliated as he made us feel, that old man taught us a great deal more than we had learnt in six lectures.

Besides our text-books, there was some practical work arranged for us. Two mornings a week we were allowed to attend the local hospital in the out-patients ward. That was intimidating, because the regular nurses, who were in a hurry and had a lot to do, despised us thoroughly. My first job was to remove the dressing from a finger, prepare warm boracic and water for it, and soak the finger for the requisite time. That was easy. The next job was an ear that needed syringing, and that I was quickly forbidden to touch. Syringing an ear was a highly technical thing, said the Sister. n.o.body unskilled should attempt it.

'Remember that. Don't think you're being useful by doing what you haven't learned to do. You might do a lot of harm.'

The next thing I had to do was to remove the dressings from the leg of a small child who had pulled over a boiling kettle on itself. That was the moment when I nearly gave up nursing for good. The bandages had, as I knew, to be soaked off gently in lukewarm water, and whatever way you did this, or touched them, the pain was agonising to the child. Poor little thing, she was only about three years old. She screamed and screamed: it was horrible. I felt so upset that I thought I was going to be sick then and there. The only thing that saved me was the sardonic gleam in the eye of a staff nurse nearby. These stuck-up young fools, the eyes said, think they can come in here and know all about everythingand they can't manage the first thing they are asked to do. Immediately I determined that I would would stick it. After all, it had stick it. After all, it had got got to be soaked offnot only the child had to bear her pain, but I had to bear her pain also. I went on with it, still feeling sick, setting my teeth, but managing it, and being as gentle as I could. I was quite taken aback when the staff nurse said suddenly to me: 'Not a bad job you've done there. Turned you up a bit at first, didn't it? It did me once.' to be soaked offnot only the child had to bear her pain, but I had to bear her pain also. I went on with it, still feeling sick, setting my teeth, but managing it, and being as gentle as I could. I was quite taken aback when the staff nurse said suddenly to me: 'Not a bad job you've done there. Turned you up a bit at first, didn't it? It did me once.'

Another part of our education was a day with the District Nurse. Here again, two of us were taken on one day of the week. We went round a number of small cottages, all of them with windows tightly closed, some of them smelling of soap, others of something quite differentthe yearning to throw open a window was sometimes almost irresistible. The ailments seemed rather monotonous. Practically everyone had what was tersely referred to as 'bad legs'. I was slightly hazy as to what bad legs were. The District Nurse said, 'Blood poisoning is very commonsome the result of venereal disease, of coursesome ulcersbad blood all of it.' Anyway that was the generic name for it among the people themselves, and I understood much better in years to come when my daily help would always say, 'My mother's ill again.'

'Oh, what's the matter with her?'

'Oh, bad legsshe's always had bad legs.'

One day on our rounds we found one of the patients had died. The District Nurse and I laid out the body. Another experience. Not so heart-rending as scalded children, but unexpected if you had never done it before.

When, in far off Serbia, an archduke was a.s.sa.s.sinated, it seemed such a faraway incidentnothing that concerned us. After all, in the Balkans people were always being a.s.sa.s.sinated. That it should touch us here in England seemed quite incredibleand I speak here not only for myself but for almost everybody else. Swiftly, after that a.s.sa.s.sination, what seemed like incredible storm clouds appeared on the horizon. Extraordinary rumours got about, rumours of that fantastic thingWar! But of course that was only the newspapers, No civilised nations went to war. There hadn't been any wars for years; there probably never would be again. But of course that was only the newspapers, No civilised nations went to war. There hadn't been any wars for years; there probably never would be again.

No, the ordinary people, everyone in fact, apart from, I suppose, a few senior Ministers and inner circles of the Foreign Office, had no conception that anything like war might happen. It was all rumourspeople working themselves up and saying it really looked 'quite serious'speeches by politicians. And then suddenly one morning it had happened. it had happened.

England was at war.

PART V

WAR

I

England was at war. It had come.

I can hardly express the difference between our feelings then and now. Now we might be horrified, perhaps surprised, but not really astonished that war should come, because we are all conscious that war does does come; that it has come in the past and that, at any moment, it might come again. But in 1914 there had been no war forhow long? Fifty yearsmore? True, there had been the 'Great Boer War', and skirmishes on the North-west Frontier, but those had not been wars involving one's own countrythey had been large army exercises, as it were; the maintenance of power in far places. This was differentwe were at war with Germany. come; that it has come in the past and that, at any moment, it might come again. But in 1914 there had been no war forhow long? Fifty yearsmore? True, there had been the 'Great Boer War', and skirmishes on the North-west Frontier, but those had not been wars involving one's own countrythey had been large army exercises, as it were; the maintenance of power in far places. This was differentwe were at war with Germany.

I received a wire from Archie: 'Come Salisbury if you can hope to see you.' The Flying Corps would be among the first to be mobilised. 'We must must go,' I said to mother. 'We must.' go,' I said to mother. 'We must.'

Without more ado we set off to the railway station. We had little money in hand; the banks were shut, there was a moratorium, and no means of getting money in the town. We got into the train, I remember, but whenever ticket collectors came, though we had three or four 5 notes that mother always kept by her, they refused them: n.o.body would take 5 notes. All over southern England, our names and addresses were taken by infinite numbers of ticket collectors. The trains were delayed and we had to change at various stations, but in the end we reached Salisbury that evening. We went to the County Hotel there. Half an hour after our arrival Archie came. We had little time together: he could not even stay and dine. We had half an hour, no more. Then he said goodbye and left.

He was sure, as indeed all the Flying Corps was, that he would be killed, and that he would never see me again. He was calm and cheerful, as always, but all those early Flying Corps boys were of the opinion that a war would be the end, and quickly, of at least the first wave of them. The German Air Force was known to be powerful.

I knew less, but to me also it came with the same certainty that I was saying goodbye to him, I should never see him again, though I, too, tried to match his cheerfulness and apparent confidence. I remember going to bed that night and crying and crying until I thought I would never stop, and then, quite suddenly, without warning, falling exhausted into such a deep sleep that I did not wake till late the following morning.

We travelled back home, giving more names and addresses to ticket collectors. Three days later, the first war postcard arrived from France. It had printed sentences on it which anyone sending a card was only allowed to cross off or leave in: such things as AM WELL, AM IN HOSPITAL, and so on. I felt, when I got it, for all its meagre information, that it was a good omen.

I hurried to my detachment in the V.A.D.s to see that was going on. We made a lot of bandages and rolled them, prepared baskets full of swabs for hospitals. Some of the things we did were useful, far more of them were no use at all, but they pa.s.sed the time, and soongrimly soonthe first casualties began to arrive. A move was made to serve refreshments to the men as they arrived at the station. This, I must say, was one of the silliest ideas that any Commandant could possibly have had. The men had been heavily fed all the way along the line from Southampton, and when they finally arrived at Torquay station the main thing was to get them out of the train on to the stretchers and ambulances, and then to the hospital.

The compet.i.tion to get into the hospital (converted from the Town Hall) and do some nursing had been great. For strictly nursing duties those chosen first had been mostly the middle-aged, and those considered to have had some experience of looking after men in illness. Young girls had not been felt suitable. Then there was a further consignment known as ward-maids, who did the house-work and cleaning of the Town Hall: bra.s.ses, floors, and such things; and finally there was the kitchen staff. Several people who did not want to nurse had applied for kitchen work; the ward-maids, on the other hand, were really a reserve force, waiting eagerly to step up into nursing as soon as a vacancy should occur. There was a staff of about eight trained hospital nurses; all the rest were V.A.D.s.

Mrs Acton, a forceful lady, acted as Matron, since she was senior officer of the V.A.D.s. She was a good disciplinarian; she organised the whole thing remarkably well. The hospital was capable of taking over two hundred patients; and everyone was lined up to receive the first contingent of wounded men. The moment was not without its humour. Mrs Spragge, General Spragge's wife, the Mayoress, who had a fine presence, stepped forward to receive them, fell symbolically on her knees before the first entrant, a walking case, motioned him to sit down on his bed, and ceremonially removed his boots for him. The man, I must say, looked extremely surprised, especially as we soon found out that he was an epileptic, and not suffering from war wounds of any kind. Why the haughty lady should suddenly remove his boots in the middle of the afternoon was more than he could understand.

I got into the hospital, but only as a ward-maid, and set to zealously on the bra.s.s. However, after five days I was moved up to the ward. Many of the middle-aged ladies had done little real nursing at all, and though full of compa.s.sion and good works, had not appreciated the fact that nursing consists largely of things like bed-pans, urinals, scrubbing of mackintoshes, the clearing up of vomit, and the odour of suppurating wounds. Their idea of nursing had, I think, been a good deal of pillow-smoothing, and gently murmuring soothing words over our brave men. So the idealists gave up their tasks with alacrity: they had never thought they would have to do anything like this, this, they said. And hardy young girls were brought to the bedside in their places. they said. And hardy young girls were brought to the bedside in their places.

It was bewildering at first. The poor hospital nurses were driven nearly frantic by the number of willing but completely untrained volunteers under their orders. They had not got even a few fairly well-trained probationer nurses to help them. With another girl, I had two rows of twelve beds; we had an energetic SisterSister Bondwho, although a first-cla.s.s nurse, was far from having patience with her unfortunate staff. We were not really unintelligent, but we were ignorant. We had been taught hardly anything of what was necessary for hospital service; in fact all we knew was how to bandage, and the general theories of nursing. The only things that did help us were the few instructions we had picked up from the District Nurse.

It was the mysteries of sterilisation that foxed us mostespecially as Sister Bond was too hara.s.sed even to explain. Drums of dressings came up, ready to be used in treatment on the wounds, and were given into our charge. We did not even know at this stage that kidney dishes were supposed to receive dirty dressings, and the round bowls pure articles. Also, as all the dressings looked extremely dirty, although actually surgically clean (they had been baked in the steriliser downstairs) it made it very puzzling. Things sorted themselves out, more or less, after a week. We discovered what was wanted of us, and were able to produce it. But Sister Bond by then had given up and left. She said her nerves wouldn't stand it.

A new Sister, Sister Anderson, came to replace her. Sister Bond had been a good nursequite first-cla.s.s, I believe, as a surgical nurse. Sister Anderson was a first-cla.s.s surgical nurse too, but she was also a woman of common sense and with a reasonable amount of patience. In her eyes we were not so much unintelligent as badly trained. She had four nurses under her on the two surgical rows, and she proceeded to get them into shape. It was Sister Anderson's habit to size up her nurses after a day or two, and to divide those whom she would take trouble to train and those who were, as she put, 'only fit to go and see if the crock is boiling'. The point of this latter remark was that at the end of the ward were about four enormous boiling urns. From these was taken boiling water for making fomentations. Practically all wounds were treated at that time with wrung-out fomentations, so seeing whether the crock was boiling was the first essential in the test. If the wretched girl who had been sent to 'see if the crock was boiling' reported that it was, and it was not, with enormous scorn Sister Anderson would demand: 'Don't you even know when water is boiling, Nurse?'

'It's got some steam puffing out of it,' said the nurse.

'That's not steam,' said Sister Anderson. 'Can't you hear the sound of it? The singing sound comes first, then it quietens down and doesn't puff, and not steam,' said Sister Anderson. 'Can't you hear the sound of it? The singing sound comes first, then it quietens down and doesn't puff, and then then the real steam comes out.' She demonstrated, murmuring to herself as she moved away, 'If they send me any more fools like that I don't know what I shall do!' the real steam comes out.' She demonstrated, murmuring to herself as she moved away, 'If they send me any more fools like that I don't know what I shall do!'

I was lucky to be under Sister Anderson. She was severe but just. On the next two rows there was Sister Stubbs, a small sister, gay and pleasant to the girls, who often called them 'dear' and, having lured them into false security, lost her temper with them vehemently if anything went wrong. It was like having a bad-tempered kitten in charge of you: it may play with you, or it may scratch you.

From the beginning I enjoyed nursing. I took to it easily, and found it, and have always found it, one of the most rewarding professions that anyone can follow. I think, if I had not married, that after the war I should have trained as a real hospital nurse. Maybe there is something in heredity. My grandfather's first wife, my American grandmother, was a hospital nurse.

On entering the nursing world we had to revise our opinions of our status in life, and our present position in the hierarchy of the hospital world. Doctors had always been taken for granted. You sent for them when you were ill, and more or less did what they told youexcept my mother: she always knew a great deal more than the doctor did, or so we used to tell her. The doctor was usually a friend of the family. Nothing had prepared me for the need to fall down and wors.h.i.+p.

'Nurse, towels for the doctor's hands!'

I soon learned to spring to attention, to stand, a human towel-rail, waiting meekly while the doctor bathed his hands, wiped them with the towel, and, not bothering to return it to me, flung it scornfully on the floor. Even those doctors who were, by secret nursing opinion, despised as below standard, in the ward now came into their own and were accorded a veneration more appropriate to higher beings.

Actually to speak to a doctor, to show him that you recognised him in any way, was horribly presumptuous. Even though he might be a close friend of yours, you were not supposed to show it. This strict etiquette was mastered in due course, but once or twice I fell from grace' On one occasion a doctor, irritable as doctors always are in hospital lifenot, I think because they feel irritable but because it is expected of them by the sisters.e.xclaimed impatiently, 'No, no, Sister, I don't want that kind of forceps. Give me...' I've forgotten the name of it now, but, as it happened, I had one in my tray and I proffered it. I did not hear the last of that that for twenty-four hours. for twenty-four hours.

'Really, Nurse, pus.h.i.+ng yourself forward in that way. Actually handing the forceps to Doctor yourself!' yourself!'

'I'm so sorry, Sister,' I murmured submissively. 'What ought Ito have done?'

'Really, Nurse, I think you should know that by now. If Doctor requires anything which you happen to be able to provide, you naturally hand it to me, and I hand it to Doctor.'

I a.s.sured her that I would not transgress again.

The flight of the more elderly would-be nurses was accelerated by the fact that our early cases came in straight from the trenches with field dressings on, and their heads full of lice. Most of the ladies of Torquay had never seen a louseI had never seen one myselfand the shock of finding these dreadful vermin was far too much for the older dears. The young and tough, however, took it in their stride. It was usual for one of us to say to the other in a gleeful tone when the next one came on duty, 'I've done all my heads,' waving one's little tooth comb triumphantly.

We had a case of teta.n.u.s in our first batch of patients. That was our first death. It was a shock to us all. But in about three weeks' time I felt as though I had been nursing soldiers all my life, and in a month or so I was quite adept at looking out for their various tricks.

'Johnson, what have you been writing on your board?' Their boards, with the temperature charts pinned on them, hung on the bottom of the bed.

'Writing on my board, Nurse?' he said, with an air of injured innocence. 'Why nothing. What should I?'

'Somebody seems to have written down a very peculiar diet. I don't think it was Sister or Doctor. Most unlikely they would order you port wine.'

Then I would find a groaning man saying, 'I think I'm very ill, Nurse. I'm sure I amI feel feverish.'

I looked at his healthy though rubicund face and then at his thermometer, which he held out to me, and which read between 104 and 105.

'Those radiators are very useful, aren't they?' I said. 'But be careful: if you put it on too too hot a radiator the mercury will go completely.' hot a radiator the mercury will go completely.'

'Ah, Nurse,' he grinned, 'you don't fall for that, do you? You young ones are much more hard-hearted than the old ones were. They used to get in no end of a paddy when we had temperatures of 104; they used to rush off to Sister at once.'

'You should be ashamed of yourself.'

'Ah, Nurse, it's all a bit of fun.'

Occasionally they had to go to the X-ray department, at the other end of the town, or for physiotherapy there. Then one used to have a convoy of six to look after, and one had to watch out for a sudden request to cross the road 'because I've got to buy a pair of bootlaces, Nurse'. You would look across the road and see that the bootshop was conveniently placed next to The George and Dragon. The George and Dragon. However, I always managed to bring back my six, without one of them giving me the slip and turning up later in a state of exhilaration. They were terribly nice, all of them. However, I always managed to bring back my six, without one of them giving me the slip and turning up later in a state of exhilaration. They were terribly nice, all of them.

There was one Scotsman whose letters I used to have to write. It seemed astonis.h.i.+ng that he should not be able to read or write, since he was practically the most intelligent man in the ward. However, there it was, and I duly wrote letters to his father. To begin with, he sat back and waited for me to begin. 'We'll write to my father now, Nurse,' he commanded.

'Yes. "Dear Father,' I began. 'What do I say next?'

'Och, just say anything you think he'd like to hear.'

'WellI think you had better tell me exactly.'

'I'm sure you know.'

But I insisted that some indication should be given me. Various facts were then revealed: about the hospital he was in, the food he had, and so on. He paused. 'I think that's all-'

"'With love from your affectionate son,'?' I suggested.

He looked deeply shocked.

'No, indeed, Nurse. You know better than that, that, I hope.' I hope.'

'What have I done wrong?'

'You should say "From your respectful son.' We won't mention love love or or affection affection or words like thatnot to my father.' or words like thatnot to my father.'

I stood corrected.

The first time I had to accompany an operation case into the theatre I disgraced myself. Suddenly the theatre walls reeled about me, and only another nurse's firm arm closing round my shoulders and ejecting me rapidly saved me from disaster. It had never occurred to me that the sight of blood or wounds would make me faint. I hardly dared face Sister Anderson when she came out later. She was, however, unexpectedly kind. 'You mustn't mind, Nurse,' she said. 'It happened to many of us the first time or so. For one thing you are not prepared for the heat and the ether together; it makes you feel a bit squeamishand that was a bad abdominal operation, and they are the most unpleasant to look at.'

'Oh Sister, do you think I shall be all right next time?'

'You'll have to try and be all right next time. And if not you'll have to go on until you are. Is that right?'

'Yes,' I said, 'that's right.'

The next one she sent me into was quite a short one, and I survived. After that I never had any trouble, though I used sometimes to turn my eyes away from the original incision with the knife. That was the thing that upset meonce it was over I could look on quite calmly and be interested. The truth of it is one gets used to anything.

II

'I think it so wrong, dear Agatha,' said one of my mother's elderly friends, 'that you should go and work in hospital on a Sunday. Sunday. Sunday is the day of rest. You should have your Sundays off.' Sunday is the day of rest. You should have your Sundays off.'

'How do you suppose the men would have their wounds dressed, get themselves washed, be given bed-pans, have their beds made and get their teas if n.o.body worked on a Sunday?' I asked. 'After all, they couldn't do without all those things for twenty-four hours, could they?'