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already dead. The following day the systematic demolition of the building had begun, and after another day and night they had brought her mother out. As they carried her past, she had turned her head very slightly on the stretcher, and her eyes had met Esther’s; there had been no smallest gleam of recognition in their depths: only pain and bewilderment and terror and—could it be?—reproach! And so she had died, Mummy who had been so pretty and sweet, so gay and funny, whose little faults of selfishness and petulance had endeared her to a selfless heart, immeasurably more than nobler qualities might have done. Alone in the world, she had gone like an automaton through the heartbreaking details of identification and burial; had sought ease for her aching remorse in the hard, rough, satisfying toil in the wards at the hospital; it was through these first bewildering days when she walked through her work in a dream of hideous unreality and lay, sleepless and haunted through night after endless night, that Woods and Frederica had first come to be her friends; against Freddi’s passionless sanity no less than Woody’s fond, maternal clucking, she had dashed out the first agony of her mother’s death.… “But I was a fool to come back here,” she thought, standing with the old man’s cheek against her arm. “I was a fool ever to think that I could forget the way she looked, when I see it again and again in the faces of strangers.…” In her heart, she reverted unconsciously to the formula of her childhood prayers. “Poor old man. God help him and make him get well.”
    Frederica came down the ward. “Esther, it’s nearly ten and I’ve just realised I haven’t had anything to eat. Could you possibly hold the fort for another ten minutes or so, while I rush out and get something? It’s all such a muddle to-night, and the orderly’s helping with stretchers, and I probably shan’t get another chance and I shall be starving by morning?”
    â€œYes, of course, darling. Don’t hurry. I can cope.”
    Freddi departed. Gervase Eden, who was Surgeon on Duty, came into the ward. “Sister here, nurse?”
    â€œNo, she’s on one of the other wards. Shall I go and get her?” Outside the hospital, Eden was Gervase to Esther and Freddi and Woods, but she added the regulation ‘Sir’.
    â€œNo, never mind. She’s probably snowed under with casualties. Major Moon’s just admitted a man …”
    â€œHere he is, sir, in the corner bed. The Emergency Post label said, ‘fractured pelvis’; he was given a morphia injection two and a half hours ago while they were digging him out. They don’t give his name; I suppose they haven’t found out yet who he is.”
    â€œYou haven’t cleaned him up?”
    â€œWell, he was still very shocked when they brought him in, so I left him to warm up. That was right, wasn’t it?”
    â€œYes, perfectly right,” said Eden. He bent over the man’s body, feeling with short, thin fingers deep into the flesh and muscle and down to the bone. The man shrank and groaned. “It’s all right, old chap. It won’t be long now, and then we’ll give you another dose of something and send you off to sleep. It isn’t very serious. You’re going to be all right.” He straightened himself and moved away from the bed. “Fractured his femur all right. Everything else seems to be intact. There’s no internal injury.” Sister arrived while he was washing his hands in the lavatory outside the ward. “I don’t think we’d better touch him to-night,” he said, explaining the state of affairs to her there. “He’s too badly shocked, and anyway we’ve got all we can cope with. They’ve fixed him up with a splint at the Emergency Post and I think we’ll leave him undisturbed and have him up to the