All the ladies gasped with admiration. Edith especially was
impressed; because the fact that Madame Frabelle was a guest, and was
managing nothing, did not prevent her talking as if she had any amount
of experience on the subject, although, by her own showing she had been
staying at hotels ever since the war began, except the last weeks she
had spent with the Ottleys.
The men soon joined them.
A group of war valetudinarians, amongst whom Bruce was not the least
emphatic, told each other their symptoms in a quiet corner. They
described their strange shiverings down the spine; the curious fits of
hunger that came on before meals; the dislike to crossing the road when
there was an accident; the inability to sleep, sometimes taking the form
of complete insomnia for as much as twenty minutes in the early morning.
They pitied each other cordially, though neither listened to the other's
symptoms, except in exchange for sympathy with their own.
'The war has got on my nerves; I can't think of anything else,' Bruce
said. 'It's an _idee fixe_. I pant for the morning when the newspaper's
due, and then I can't look at it! Not even a glance! Odd, isn't it?'
The Rev.
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