"
The man on the cot looked up. "You have a letter, I see," and as he spoke
broke into childlike tears, for so did long suffering deal with the most
self-controlled in those terrible years, which we do well to forgive, and
to remember with pride not for ourselves alone. The child-man on the bed
murmured, "Home was too much for me."
The surgeon who loved him well said, "Read your letter--you are not the
only man in this ward whom pain has made a baby. Home will complete your
cure--home!"
"Thank you, Tom." He turned to the letter and using the one half-useful
hand opened it with difficulty. What he first felt was disappointment at
the brevity of the letter. He was what Blake called home-hungry. With
acute perception, being himself a homeless man, Blake made his diagnosis
of that form of heart-ache which too often adds a perilously depressing
agency to the more material disasters of war. Pain, fever, the inevitable
ward odours, the easier neighbour in the next bed who was of a mind
to be social, the flies--those Virginia flies more wily than Lee's
troopers--and even trifling annoyances made Penhallow irritable. He
became a burden to hospital stewards and over-worked orderlies, and now
the first look at Leila's letter disturbed him, and as he read he became
indignant:
"DEAR JOHN: Mr.
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