Just now I am feeling so sorrowful at the prospect of leaving this hospital (my home for the last three and a half years) that I hardly know how to give my attention to telling you how the last few months have been spent. No, I have not been turned out, and they have given me a first-class certificate, and are good enough to say that they are very sorry I am going, and perhaps they will have me back again some day! I think I was warded when I wrote to you last, and after that they sent me home for a little rest. Whenever I go home some one in the village gets ill, or some child gets scalded, or some accident happens; they seem to think it is necessary to keep my hand in; but during that visit home my only patient was poor Jessie, the family cat! It was Sunday evening, and we were all sitting in the dining-room just after prayers, when poor Jessie hobbled in, really screaming with pain. One leg had evidently been caught in a trap, and there was a bad compound fracture which she could not bear me to handle, so I said we must either have some chloroform or the poor dear must be shot. The nearest doctor (and chloroform) was three miles away, but C. volunteered to fetch some, and went off on his bicycle, while I prepared some splints and strapping, &c., and poor Jessie used bad language under the table. I have sometimes had to hold an obstreperous child while it has been given chloroform, but that is nothing to holding a cat! However, at last we got her under, and then put the fracture in good position and stitched up the wound, securing the leg very firmly on splints; this operation was watched with much interest by all the family and most of the servants; at first the cat would not come to, but we put her in a hamper with plenty of fresh air, and when she _did_ come to, the language she used was "something awful," but she soon settled down and made a good recovery. My people were very anxious for me to say I could not go back to the hospital at the end of my fortnight's sick leave as the cat was still in splints, but I had to leave her to my assistant. Then I returned to duty as Night Sister again, and everything went on much as usual--generally rather more work than I could do well, and sometimes rushing nights of accidents and emergencies, when it seemed almost impossible to fit in all that had to be done. It seems that every year more operations are done; the cases are sent out more quickly, and so make room for more acute cases, and so the work grows, but the number of nurses does not grow in the same proportion.