acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

—
64 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
lapse ; and here I sometimes found myself a visitor.
By its sights and sounds this room provided vivid
impressions of life and scenes in a mission hospital in
Asia Minor. Here you were in the presence of hard
unceasing work : you heard of hopes and successes,
scraps of the patients' histories : you heard also cries
and moans of pain, for about this time dressings were
being done. Through the ward doors were glimpses
now and then of dark-faced patients in rows of closely
spaced l)eds. Outside the open French windows was
the balcony, here overhung by a clambering trumpetvine
between whose leaves the sunlight streamed and
made patterns of light and shade on wall and floor.
Up and down the balcony went patients taking the
sun and air. They always gazed curiously into the
room in passing, and wondered at its easy-chairs, and
tea-table, and foreign inmates following the customs
of their country. Beyond the balcony lay the
lawn and garden, a screen of young trees, and then
the compound wall with the native town huddling
against it ; and a red brick minaret so near at hand
that you could see the priest walking round the little
gallery, see him place open hand on cheek, and clearly
hear each word of his call to prayer. In this room
one afternoon I asked about the surgical patient
who had been carried like a sack of wheat.
" He is getting on well," said the English nurse
brightly, as if nothing else could have been expected.
At this moment a messaofe came for her— somethinof
about a bed to be ready.
" Another shooting case," she remarked as the
messenger left the room. " Do you know Bromley
Bromley in Kent, at all?" she went on, her mind
turninpf to home.
But then another interruption took place—a cry
without of '' Posta gelde" (the post has come); and
following it was a sense of general stir and movement
; of feet turning quickly towards the Mission
Post Office. For the coming of the mail is the great
event of the week.