“Wouldn’t it refresh you if I were to sponge your face and hands, my man?” she inquired, in dulcet tones.
The patient, who was pretty bad, rolled a resigned but exhausted glance at her.
“If you like, mum. It’s the tenth time it’s been done this morning!”
Perhaps, like the war itself, everything is on too tremendous a scale now to permit of such light-hearted playing with the dread sequels of combat. We can no more afford to make a game of nursing than a game of fighting in this world struggle. It is possible that only such of our _mondaines_ as have the necessary knowledge and devotion are permitted to have charge of those precious lives, and that the others confine themselves to post-cards and coffee-stalls, and dashing little raids into the firing-lines with chocolates and socks. We trust it may be so. We confess that what we ourselves beheld of the local amateur Red Cross fills us with some misgiving.
Of course, as has been said, being a very enlightened community, we were not going to be left behind. A special series of lectures was announced almost within a week of the declaration of war. The daughter of the household determined to join.
On her arrival, a little late, at the village hall, she was met by the secretary of the undertaking; a charming and capable young lady, looking, however, at this particular moment distraught to the verge of collapse.
“Oh, _do_ you know anything about home nursing? _Do_ you think you could teach a little class how to take temperatures? You could easily pick up what you want to learn afterwards, couldn’t you? There are such a lot of them, and they’re all so, so----” She substituted “difficult to teach” for the word trembling on her lips. “Nurse Blacker doesn’t know which way to turn.”
“Oh, I can certainly teach them to take temperatures,” said the Signorina. Nurses, like poets, are born, not made; and she is of those who have the instinct how to help. Besides this she has had experience.
She was disappointed, however. She had come to learn, not to teach. It seemed to her, moreover, almost inconceivable that any female who had arrived at years of discretion and was of normal intellect should not be able to take a temperature; but she swallowed her feelings, after the example of the secretary, and went briskly in to begin her task.