Thus he grumbled continuously. "There's old Hall in that bed over there. _He's_ wantin' to go 'ome, too." Bettesworth spoke with a sneer, not at our poor old neighbour Hall, but at Hall's pitiful prospect of getting release from this imprisonment. He told me of the other's bad cough, and of his age, and so forth, and for a minute or two forgot his own grievances, but only for a minute or two. I asked some question about the doctor. The doctor? They never set eyes on him, for two or three days at a time. And he didn't give him any medicine much, either. That bottle he" (Bettesworth) "had from the club doctor before leaving home--he only had two doses out of it, but that was a _lot_ nicer than this stuff. And the bed was hard--"nothin' soft to lay on," and his back was getting sore. "Let's see--'twas a fortnight last Thursday I come here, wasn't it?" "No, a week." "Oh, only a week? I thought 'twas a fortnight. The time seems so _long_." A woman and a girl were at old Hall's bedside, farther down the ward. I could see him sitting up, panting, white, the picture of despair. Then the woman turned and came towards us; it was Bettesworth's niece Liz. She was smiling a little bewilderedly. "He wants me to send for the nurse," she said, alluding to Hall; "he wants to go home." She joined me in talking to Bettesworth. One or two things I told him about the garden awakened but a faint interest in him; and meanwhile I could see Hall sitting up, his under-lip drooping, his eyes abnormally bright. Yet I think he could not see much. Usually he wears spectacles, being eighty years old. And still we talked to Bettesworth. His niece was as unsuccessful as myself in trying to reason with him. To some remark of hers, suggesting that if he were at home he would be without anyone to nurse him, he replied fiercely (and I have no notion of his meaning), "No! and there won't _be_ none, neither, once I gets home and got my key. I shall lock my door!..." Liz argued then that this place was so comfortable and so clean. "'Tis the patients has to do that," said Bettesworth. At last a nurse came to old Hall, and we listened while he proffered his request to go home. "To-morrow," he said. "Oh, you can't go till you've seen the doctor!" The nurse spoke pleasantly, though of course with decision, and bustled away. But Bettesworth, with his sneer, commented, "Ah! I _thought_ she'd snap his head off!"