A.D.; here and there a Sister with her
"boys." It was a family gathering. I descried no strangers, and no one
not in uniform--unless you count the men too ill to don their blue
slops: these had been brought in dressing-gowns or wrapped in blankets.
No mere haphazard audience, this, of anybody and everybody who chooses
to pay at a turnstile! Entrance to this hall is free ... but the price
is beyond money, all the same.
A family party it was, decidedly. Thick fumes of tobacco smoke uprose
from it. (Shall we ever abandon the cigarette habit, now?) Orderlies
continued to arrive and stow themselves discreetly in corners: by some
strange providence each orderly had found that for a while he could be
spared from ward or office. Staff-Sergeants, Sergeants,
Corporals--mysteriously they made time to leave their various
departments. Even a bevy of masseuses (those experts eternally on the
rush from ward to ward) had peeped in to see the nigger minstrels. And
everybody was pleased: every jest and every conundrum got its laugh,
every ballad its applause. Not that we ever "give the bird" to those
who come to amuse us.
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