“The _personnel_ of our vineyard is abundant, but there are various sour
grapes growing about. We have a medical school (containing lots of nice
boys, only a girl may not speak to them even in the corridors), and a
full staff of honorary and visiting physicians and surgeons. But the
only doctor we really have much to do with is the house surgeon, a young
fellow who has just finished his student's course. His name is Abery,
and since Saturday he has so much respect for Glory that she might even
swear in his presence (in Manx), but Sister Allworthy takes care that
she doesn't, having designs on his celibacy herself. He must have sung
his _Te Deum_ after the operation, for he got gloriously drunk and
wanted to inject morphia in a patient recovering from trouble of the
kidney. It was an old hippopotamus of a German musician named Koenig,
and he was in a frantic terror. So I whispered to him to pretend to go
to sleep, and then I told the doctor I had lost the syringe. But--'Gough
bless me sowl!'--what a dressing the Sister gave me!
“Yesterday was visiting-day, and when the friends of the patients come
even an hospital can have its humours. They try to sneak in little
dainties which may be delicious in themselves, but are deadly poison
to the people they are intended for. Then we have to search under the
bedclothes of the patients, and even feel the pockets of their visitors.
The mother of my little boy came yesterday, and I noticed such a large
protuberance at her bosom under her ulster that I began to foresee
another operation. It was only a brick of currant cake, paved with
lemon peel. I hauled it out and moved round like a cloud of thunder and
lightning. But she began to cry and to say she had made it herself for
Johnnie, and then--well, didn't I just get a wigging from the Sister,
though!
“But I don't mind what happens here, for I am in London, and to be in
London is to live, and to live is to be in London. I've not seen much
of it yet, having only two hours off duty every day--from ten to
twelve--and then all I can do is to make little dips into the park and
the district round about, like a new pigeon with its wings clipped.
But I watch the great new world from my big box up here, and see the
carriages in the park and the people riding on horseback. They have
a new handshake in London. You lift your hand to the level of your
shoulder, and then waggle horizontally as if you had put your elbow out;
and when you begin to speak you say, 'I--er--' as if you had got the
mumps. But it is beautiful! The sound of the traffic is like music, and
I feel like a war-horse that wants to be marching to it. How delightful
it is to be young in a world so full of loveliness! And if you are not
very ugly it's none the worse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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