Its narrow stone-bound curve is hung over by uncared-for plane-trees, and by ragged, jagged, rickety, crooked houses, that lilt and tilt and lean together and over, dingy and dark. The rough cobbled quays have small traffic now, the litter of the canal's old life is gone from them. They are quiet, with no more rough calling and shouting of carters, and turmoil of hoofs and wheels. Sometimes, but rarely, a slow heavy flat canal boat is towed and poled along, through the locks and under the high black bridges. But most times the slow tawny water flows unbroken. The tawny leaves of the plane-trees are fallen, and lie on the cobbles and in the water. The stems and branches of the plane-trees have black reflections in the water, with the reflections of crazy roofs and chimney-pots, and of tatters and rags of colour from windows and walls. Sometimes in the mornings, these October mornings of sardius and topaz and sapphire, I find myself singing as I walk along the edge of my canal. It is so difficult not to be happy. Hospital My hospital was, all of it, built in the time that means lovely things of red-brick and grey stone and blue gables. The courtyards are paved with huge ancient cobbles, and there are grass plots that are green and wet, and big trees and bushes whose leaves are falling slowly in blue stillness. There are more than two thousand sick in my hospital, six hundred wounded of the war, one hundred and fifty of them in our service. I love to write "my" hospital and "our" service. Madame Marthe Hospital, Tuesday, October 19th Things had been very bad all day. When night came it seemed dreadful to go away and leave so much suffering. I thought of the night, with fever and that special helplessness which belongs to the night. I would have been so glad to stay the night out with the ward. I said that to Madame Marthe, as we left together. She said, "But why?" She always has a cold and wears a little blue woollen cape over her blouse and apron. When she leaves the hospital she pins up the two black ribbon streamers of her cap of the tri-couleurs and wraps her arms around in the blue woollen cape. She looks very small and cold and poor. "Why?" she asked. The hospital is her world and she is thankful for every minute she can get away from it. I leave my world to come to it. I was ashamed to say to her, "It is for my own comfort I want to stay, to make myself imagine that I really am needed." Hospital Things They Say