THE Doctors in Petershof always said that the caretakers of the invalids were a much greater anxiety than the invalids themselves.  The invalids would either get better or die:  one of two things probably.  At any rate, you knew where you were with them.  But not so with the caretakers:  there was nothing they were not capable of doing—­except taking reasonable care of their invalids!  They either fussed about too much, or else they did not fuss about at all.  They all began by doing the right thing:  they all ended by doing the wrong.  The fussy ones had fits of apathy, when the poor irritable patients seemed to get a little better; the negligent ones had paroxysms of attentiveness, when their invalids, accustomed to loneliness and neglect, seemed to become rather worse by being worried.

To remonstrate with the caretakers would have been folly:  for they were well satisfied with their own methods.

To contrive their departure would have been an impossibility:  for they were firmly convinced that their presence was necessary to the welfare of their charges.  And then, too, judging from the way in which they managed to amuse themselves, they liked being in Petershof, though they never owned that to the invalids.  On the contrary, it was the custom for the caretakers to depreciate the place, and to deplore the necessity which obliged them to continue there month after month.  They were fond, too, of talking about the sacrifices which they made, and the pleasures which they willingly gave up in order to stay with their invalids.  They said this in the presence of their invalids.  And if the latter had told them by all means to pack up and go back to the pleasures which they had renounced, they would have been astonished at the ingratitude which could suggest the idea.

They were amusing characters, these caretakers.  They were so thoroughly unconscious of their own deficiencies.  They might neglect their own invalids, but they would look after other people’s invalids, and play the nurse most soothingly and prettily where there was no call and no occasion.  Then they would come and relate to their neglected dear ones what they had been doing for others:  and the dear ones would smile quietly, and watch the buttons being stitched on for strangers, and the cornflour which they could not, get nicely made for themselves, being carefully prepared for other people’s neglected dear ones.

Some of the dear ones were rather bitter.  But there were many of a higher order of intelligence, who seemed to realize that they had no right to be ill, and that being ill, and therefore a burden on their friends, they must make the best of everything, and be grateful for what was given them, and patient when anything was withheld.  Others of a still higher order of understanding, attributed the eccentricities of the caretakers to one cause alone:  the Petershof air.  They know it had the invariable effect of getting into the head, and upsetting the balance of