Mappin who, on being asked the whereabouts of her soldier son,
said, "'E's in France; I don't rightly know w'ere the place is, but it's
_called_ 'Dugout'"), she had settled down, for the remainder of her
sojourn on this plane, to a prospect of work, continuous work. A little
more or a little less made no difference to her. She had nothing else to
do, but work; nothing else to be interested in, except work--and her
children's progress, and her cups of tea. Her ample figure concealed a
warm heart. Behind her wrinkled old face there was a brain with a
limited outfit of ideas--and the chief of those ideas was _work_.
Our cup of tea was refreshing, but it would be incorrect to convey the
notion that I was allowed to linger over such a luxury. There are few
intervals for leisure in the duty-hours of an orderly in an officers'
ward. Had the Sister and her nurses not been occupied elsewhere, I doubt
whether I should have been free to drink that cup of tea at all--a
circumstance of which perhaps Mrs. Mappin was more aware than I. At any
rate the call of "Orderly!" from a patient summoned me from the kitchen
and into the ward long before I had finished drying Mrs.
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