The house revolved around Jimmy now, Jimmy, who
seemed the better for the moving, and whose mother as yet had
failed to materialize.
In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her
as the early twilight was falling in through the gate where the
sentry kept guard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim
playground men wandered about, smoking their daily allowance of
tobacco and moving to keep warm, offscourings of the barracks,
derelicts of the slums, with here and there an honest citizen
lamenting a Christmas away from home. The hospital was always
pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve she found it
harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be so
much suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful,
insupportable. Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital
in festivity is very affecting. It smiles through its tears. And
in every assemblage there are sharply defined lines of
difference. There are those who are going home soon, God willing;
there are those who will go home some time after long days and
longer nights. And there are those who will never go home and who
know it. And because of this the ones who are never going home
are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the
nurses mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They
receive an extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,--and they
are not the less grateful because they understand.
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