Behind the stone pillar of the gateway is one dirty little patch of
snow; I saw it even in the moonless darkness.
The crown of the hill here holds the last snows, but for all that the
spring smell is steaming among the trees and up and down the bracken
slopes in the garden next door.
There is no moon, there are no stars, no promise to the eye, but in the
dense, vapouring darkness the bulbs are moving. I can smell what is not
earth or rain or bark.
The curtain has been drawn over No. 11; the Sister holds the corners
tightly against the window-frame. He is outside, somewhere in the world,
and I am here moving among my thirty friends; and since it isn't spring
yet, the lights are lit to hide the twilight. The Sister's eyes talk to
me again as we make beds--yes, even bed No. 11 with a little jaundice
boy in it. They let me make it now!
Last night we had another concert in the ward.
A concert demoralizes me. By reason of sitting on the beds and talking
to whom one wills, I regain my old manners, and forget that a patient
may be washed, fed, dressed but not talked to. My old manners were more
gracious, but less docile.
Afterwards we wheeled the beds back into their positions. I bumped Mr.
Lambert's as I wheeled it, and apologized.
"I'm not grumbling," he smiled from his pillow.
"You never do," I answered.
"You don't know me, nurse!"
And I thought as I looked down at him "I shall never know him better or
so well again...."
Indeed a Sister is a curious creature. She is like a fortress,
unassailable, and whose sleeping guns may fire at any minute.
I was struck with a bit of knowledge last night that will serve me
through life, i.e. that to justify oneself is the inexcusable fault. It
is better to be in the wrong than in the right.