The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean sheet around his shoulders and gave himself up to the luxury of bed--real bed. The morning sunlight poured through the open windows, attended by a delicious odour which after a while he recognized as the scent of the sea. Where he was he had no notion. He had absorbed so much of Tommy's philosophy as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the night before, after much travel in ambulances by land and sea. If he had been a walking case, he might have taken more interest in things; but the sniper's bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite of being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he had suffered great pain and longed for nothing and thought of nothing but a permanent resting-place. Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have seen no cleaner, whiter, brighter place in the world than this airy ward, swept by the sea-breeze. He counted seven beds besides his own. On a table running down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas and a bowl of roses. He thought there was never in the world so clean and cool a figure as the grey-clad nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap. When she passed near him again, he summoned her. She came to his bedside. "What do you call this particular region of fairyland?" She stared at him for a moment, adjusting things in her mind; for his name and style were 35792 Private Trevor, J. M., but his voice and phrase were those of her own social class. Then she smiled, and told him. The corner of fairyland was a private auxiliary hospital in a Lancashire seaside town. "Lancashire," said Doggie, knitting his brow in a puzzled way, "but why have they sent me to Lancashire? I belong to a West Country regiment, and all my friends are in the South." "What's he grousing about, Sister?" suddenly asked the occupant of the next bed. "He's the sort of chap that doesn't know when he's in luck and when he isn't. I'm in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, I am, and when I was hit before, they sent me to a military hospital in Inverness. That'd teach you, my lad. This for me every time. You ought to have something to grouse at." "I'm not grousing, you idiot!" said Doggie. "'Ere--who's he calling an idjit?" cried the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman, raising himself on his elbow. The nurse intervened; explained that no one could be said to grumble at a hospital when he called it fairyland. Trevor's question was that of one in search of information. He did not realize that in assigning men to the various hospitals in the United Kingdom, the authorities could not possibly take into account an individual man's local association. "Oh well, if it's only his blooming ignorance----" "That's just it, mate," smiled Doggie, "my blooming ignorance." "That's all right," said the nurse. "Now you're friends."