"You're not looking well," said the staff of _The Muddleton Weekly
Gazette_ sympathetically.
"No, Sir. Can't sleep, Sir. Haven't done for days till last night. I
went off beautiful quite early, and then the new nurse come and woke me
to give me my sleeping draught. That finished it for the night. Strange
thing, sleep. There's no sense about it. Take Bill Hawkins now, a pal of
mine in B Company. He was hit and took to hospital. Not serious at all.
'Me for a rest cure,' he says. But he was in that hospital for weeks and
weeks, getting worse and worse; he couldn't sleep a wink. The more they
drugged him, and the more sheep he counted, the more wide-awake he was.
The doctors got angry and called him an obstinate case. He said it
wasn't poisons but noise he needed, so they fetched an orderly and set
him banging one of them frying-pan baths with a ram-rod. In five minutes
Bill falls asleep as peaceful as a lamb, and the orderly, being tired,
stops. Up leaps Bill, wide awake as ever, asking what's wrong. Naturally
they couldn't bang a bath for him all night every night, and the house
surgeon was just thinking about getting ready a slab in the mortuary,
when Bill's brother, an engine-driver, comes along. He took Bill to his
box just outside Charing Cross station and made up a bed for him there.
Bill slept for three days solid and was about again in a week."
"Very fortunate," murmured the _Gazette_.
"So that time, you see, the doctors was done. But that don't often
happen. There was a doctor I knew out there, name of Gordon. Young
fellow he was, too, and very keen; seemed to think the War was started
specially to give him surgical practice, and he loved his lancets more
than his mother. He used to welcome cases with open arms, so to speak,
do his very best to heal 'em quick, and weep when he succeeded. Well, he
happened to be in our trench one day, showing our Sub a new case of
knives, when Charlie Black was carried in on a stretcher in an awful
mess.
"'I must operate at once to save your life,' he says.
"Charlie smiled as best he could and said he was agreeable.
"'But there's no anæsthetic here,' he says, 'and I can't do it without.
Couldn't you do a faint for me?'
"Charlie says he's sorry, but he's never practised fetching a faint at
will, like a woman can.
"'Well, then,' he says, 'you'll have to be stunned.' And he fetches a
small sandbag and gives it to the stretcher-bearer.
"'Chap here,' he explains to Charlie, 'will count up slowly, and when he
gets to fifty he'll hit you on the head with the sandbag and knock you
out.'
"Charlie grins, and the stretcher-bearer begins to count. When he gets
to ten he rolls up his sleeves; when he gets to twenty he takes a good
grip of the sandbag; at thirty he rolls his eyes and sticks out his jaw;
at forty, he lifts the bag over his shoulder and draws one foot back,
Charlie watching him all the time. 'For-ty-six,' he says slowly, 'for-ty
seven, for-ty-eight, for-ty-nine,' and then----"
"You're not going to tell me that he really----"
"No, he didn't," said Truthful James. "Charlie fainted."
"That was their intention, I presume?"
"Your presumption is correct, Sir. The doctor finished the job before
Charlie come to again. Smart, wasn't it?"
"Very smart indeed."
"But that's nothing. Nothing at all to what he could do. He once cut a
fellow open, took out his liver, extracted twenty-three shrapnel bullets
from it, bounced it on the floor to see it was all right, and put it
back, all inside of three minutes. And the fellow what owns the liver
hasn't had a to-morrow morning head-ache once since."
"He must be a very clever doctor," suggested the other, to fill in a
pause.
"Talking of doctors," James went on, "reminds me of a man I saw out
there who wasn't a doctor, leastways not one of ours. We was in the
fire-trenches one night when a voice hails us from the other side of the
entanglements. After the usual questions we brings him over the parapet,
and he explains to our Sub that he's been in front attending to some
wounded men in a listening post what was blown up. All perfectly correct
and proper; gives his name and rank, too, and is wearing an R.A.M.C.
uniform--rank, Captain. As he passes me on his way to the Sub's dug-out
I happens to catch sight of his face, and it give me quite a shock. I
was took ill immediate. I manages to stagger to the dug-out, and I
mutters hoarsely, 'Sir, I'm sick. I think I'm going to die.'
"'Sick?' says the Sub. 'You don't look sick.'
"'I'm sorry, Sir,' I says.
"'Well,' says he, turning to the other man, 'the Captain here will soon
put you right.'
"'Certainly,' says the Doc very sharp. 'Where do you feel pain--stomach,
heart, head?'
"'No, Sir,' says I, 'I got a nawful pain in me inn'erds.'
"'What did you say?' he asks.
"'In me inn'erds, Sir,' I says, 'spreading from me gizzard to me
probossis,' them being the only out-of-the-way words I could think of
off-hand.
"'H'm,' says he, pretending to understand perfectly, 'it is probably
nothing serious. You must diet yourself; take nothing but light food
and----'
"Here the Sub interrupts him, thinking there's something mighty queer
about a doctor what is so ready to prescribe diet for a probossis, and
asks him a lot more questions. Of course the beer was in the sawdust
then, and very soon a guard was called up to take our German Captain
Doctor Spy away to a safe place.
"It was lucky I knew his face. Before perfidjus Albion forced this war
on the poor KAYSER I'd seen him often in London. He was boss of a firm
above the place where I worked, and he used to order his Huns about in
their own language, and chuck his empty lager bottles out of his window
into our yard. I'm glad I got my own back for that."
"Jim," cried an orderly, "you're wanted for your dressing."
James rose languidly. "That means na-poo, then, Sir," he said.
"Na-poo?" echoed the _Gazette_.
"Where's your learning, Sir?" asked James. "That's French for 'no
more.'"
"I hope your dressing will not be painful," ventured the other.
"How would you like to have a probe rammed through your hand twice a
day?" demanded James with a smile. "But it's all part of the game.
Comforts for Tommy. Everyone has their own way of making us happy, not
forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred little lavender
bags, with pretty little bows on them, all sewn by herself, to keep our
linen sweetly perfumed. It's nice to think that they all mean well, and
I always follow the advice of the auctioneer what was trying to pass off
a plated teapot as solid silver."
"What did he say?"
"Look at the bright side," answered James over his shoulder as he
hurried away. "O reevwaw, Sir."
* * * * *
"On the night of February 29th ten thousand women marched
through Unter Den London crying 'bread' and 'peace.'"
_Daily Gleaner_ (_Kingston, Jamaica._)
We missed them in the Tube.
* * * * *
"WAIT AND SEE."
[Illustration: Mr. Asquith. "WELL, AS WE SAY IN HOME, I HAVE BEEN, I
HAVE SEEN----"
Mr. Punch. "THEN YOU NEEDN'T WAIT ANY MORE, SIR; ALL YOU'VE GOT TO DO IS
TO GO IN AND CONQUER."]
* * * * *