He smiled disarmingly and answered ‘I haven’t much of an eye for scenery: I don’t seem to notice it much, anyway; and, to say the truth, I’m keen on getting to a place in Hampshire called A⸺ where a big swell a friend in Westralia gave me an introduction to lives. There’ll be more people there, and I’ve not seen many so far outside the hospital at X⸺.’ ‘Were they good to you there?’ I asked. ‘Good as gold, but uncommon strict, and there were more flowers to smell than food to eat on the table at meals some days. But they were kind, and no mistake. The ward-sister opened all the windows of the ward I was in to let me hear the gramophone in another wing spouting out “Australia will be there.” There were a lot of enterics among the patients, poor chaps. Queer, isn’t it? how the ones I’m most sorry for seem to get the least attention from visitors. Why, I wouldn’t wear my wound stripe in hospital for fear they’d feel out of it, but there were ladies, young and pretty and old and ugly, who’d come into the ward and, if they saw a man with a couple of fingers missing or a bandage round his head, it was “Oh, I _am_ so sorry you are wounded! Does it hurt much? Would you care to come out for a motor-ride and have tea at our house this afternoon?” ... The wounded chap would say “My wound’s all right, thank you, I’m only wearing that bandage to please the doctor”; but she’d go on pouring out sympathy and invitations till the poor devil was forced to accept. Next bed, perhaps, there’d be an enteric, dead sick of hospital and feeling like nothing on earth. “Where were _you_ wounded?” the lady would ask. “Not wounded, miss—enteric (or perhaps dysentery)’s my trouble.” “Ooo-hh!” says the sympathiser with wounded men only, and on she goes to the next bed. No drives or tea-parties for the men that were lying there weeks and weeks, while we that were well and fit, but for a bullet-hole or two or a scratch of a shell, would be fairly smothered with attention. My word! it used to make me feel sick and ashamed.’