A Diary Without Dates Kindle Edition

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...and order and a quiet procession of duties. Last night I made beds with the eldest Sister. The eldest Sister is good company to make beds with; she is quiet unless I rouse her, and when I talk she smiles with her eyes. I like to walk slowly round the ward, stooping and rising over the white beds, flicking the sheets mechanically from the mattress, and finally turning the mattress with an ease which gives me pleasure because I am strong. In life nothing is too small to please.... Once during the evening the eldest Sister said to me: "I am worried about your throat. Is it no better?" And from the pang of pleasure and gratitude that went through me I have learnt the value of such remarks. In every bed there is some one whose throat is at least more sore than mine.... Though I am not one of those fierce V.A.D.'s who scoff at sore throats and look for wounds, yet I didn't know it was so easy to give pleasure. The strange, disarming ways of men and women! I stood in the bunk to-night beside the youngest Sister, and she looked up suddenly with her absent stare and said, "You're not so nice as you used to be I" I was dumbfounded. Had I been " nice "? And now different.... What a maddening sentence, for I felt she was going to refuse me any spoken explanation. But one should not listen to what people say, only to what they mean, and she was one of those persons whose minds one must read for oneself, since her words so often deformed her thoughts. The familiarity and equality of her tone seemed to come from some mood removed from the hospital, where her mistrustful mind was hovering about a trouble personal to herself. She did not mean " You are not so nice..." but "You don't like me so much...."... Read more