United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now, lying panting on his pillows, raised high by the light chair slipped in behind them, hospital-fashion, he looked beyond the whitewashed walls northwards, to grimy London. He dreamed, while the chart-nurse was still apologising about the forgotten breakfast, of the High Ritual in the sacred place, and the solemn joy of the vested celebrant of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
The chart-nurse looked in to say that the Medical officers of the Garrison Staff were making the rounds, and was stricken to the soul by the discovery that the Reverend Julius Fraithorn had had no breakfast.
He has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart-nurse is in love with him, unless I'm mistaken in the symptoms of the complaint. And he looks like St. Francis of Assisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty and coughs fit to tear your heart. B'rrh!" she shuddered. He repeated: "I'll see what can be done to-morrow. These cases are deceptive. There may be a gleam of hope."
The Colonel remained, making those about the bed a group of five. The chart-nurse stayed, pending the nod of dismissal, a rigid statue of capped and aproned discipline, upright in the corner. "Phew!" Captain Bingo blew a vast sigh of relief, and produced a cigar-case. "Well out of that, my boy. All jumps this morning; wouldn't take the odds you're not as bad?" "Rather!"
"Poor beggar!" said a large, pink man, wearing the red shoulder-straps and brown-leather leggings of the Staff, to another, a fair, handsome, young giant who leaned against the opposite door-post, as the chart-nurse hurried to take away the pillows, and lay the patient flat, and the shorter of the two medical officers dropped brandy from a flask into a glass with water in it, while the tall Scot, his finger on the pulse, stooped over the pale figure on the bed;
The return of the chart-nurse followed by a probationer carrying a laden tray provoked an exclamation from the little Irishman. "Signs on it, the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil a wonder he went off like he did a bit back. And you can't deny him, Saxham?"
Then the chart-nurse and the probationer who had been banished with the tray, came bustling back with towels, and razors, and a soapy solution in a basin, having a carbolic smell. Dr. Saxham had gone to take a disinfecting bath, the nurse said, as she went about her minute preparations; and the Commanding Officer had gone with the Staff, and now her poor dear must let himself be got ready.
"There is one doubt about the case which might infer a hope. I don't know what discoveries the London doctors made, but I wormed out of the chart-nurse, who plainly adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorp can't scare up a bacillus for the life of them." His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his tone was jesting. "You're thrown away on mere journalism.
Word Of The Day