, and when they brought her back, an hour later, her gown and her hair were streaming water and she looked half-drowned.—I learned then that being plunged meant being dropped in a bath. That gave me some comfort, at least; for it seemed to me that being bathed could not be nearly so bad as being suckered and pumped . . .
I still knew nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
Then something happened. There came a day—I think it was the hottest day of all that stifling summer—that turned out to be Nurse Bacon''s birthday; and on the night of it, she had some other nurses come secretly to our room, to give them a party. They did this, sometimes, as I think I have said. They weren''t allowed to, and their talking made it harder than ever for the rest of us to sleep; but we should never have dared tell a doctor—for then the nurses would have put it down to delusions and, after, hit us. They made us lie very still, while they sat about playing cards or dominoes, drinking lemonade and, sometimes, beer.
They had beer on this night, on account of it being Nurse Bacon''s birthday night; and because it was hot they took too much of it and got drunk. I lay with the sheet across my face, but kept my eyes half open. I dared not try to sleep while they were there, in case I dreamed of Maud again; for it had got with me what you might call—or what Dr Christie, I suppose, might call—a morbid fear, of