This was nice. It was fun being in bed in a ward of perfectly strange women, rather than in a stuffy infirmary with six or seven nurses talking shop and telling jokes all the time. She looked down the ward at the rows of beds, and the glass partition which separated them from the other fourteen beds; at the place where the partition stopped in the center of the ward to create an aisle and then at the white beds beyond. Through the far windows was a perfectly glorious sunset, and out of her own window just the feathery beginning of new leaves upon an old tree.
She had never seen the ward from this angle. It was really a very pretty sight, when viewed from bed and with nothing to do. Perhaps it was because she had been through so much emotionally today that it looked especially pretty. Things did, after such days.
Or perhaps it was because she wasn't rushing to get everything in order before the duty changes, rushing to remember this and do that. For once her day was ending with the sun's setting.
It was a good feeling. She stretched her toes and the covers swelled with her rising breasts. And now in a few minutes supper would be along.
The ward was full of chatter, but she didn't hear it. A voluptuous relaxation was upon her. In bed. At sunset. Awaiting supper, and watching the ugly faces of old women bloom, with the softening light ... and the new leaves on the tree taking on that clear green which hurt.
"You are the last in line, so I'm a half minute late in bringing it to you," the student nurse apologized, poising her tray. "Want to sit up?"
"Please, nurse," Rose responded in a very helpless voice.
The nurse wound up her bed, took away the wash basin and Rose began her supper.
It fitted in exactly with her mood, and seemed, at the moment, much nicer than the meals she had in the nurses' dining room.
Cream of tomato soup, and batter-bread and liver with bacon and lots of gravy, and lettuce salad with thousand island dressing, and then for dessert stewed pears ... the only stewed fruit she liked. How utterly lucky!
She began "tasting" and discovered that her milk had real cream in it, too. That was sumptuous!
She ate with a dainty grace which captivated Mrs. Witherspoon, who put down her soup bowl from which she had been drinking, and announced "Birdlike! That's what you are! Set a body wondering soon as I seen you. Lift your fork as refined as a canary does his foot. Pleasure to watch you at your victuals, dearie."