The name of the Danger List explains itself.  When a patient is put on the Danger List, his relatives are sent for and may be with him whether it is the visiting afternoon or not. (If they come from the provinces they are presented with a railway pass and, if poor, are allotted lodgings near the hospital, a grant being made to them from our Benevolent Fund.) For the information of the V.A.D.’s who answer visitors’ questions in the Enquiry Bureau at the main entrance to the hospital, a copy of the Danger List hangs there, and it is on record that an awestruck child, seeing this column of patients’ names, and reading the heading, asked, “What does ‘Danger List’ mean?  Does it mean that it’s dangerous to go near them?” Now in Ward C 22 a patient, a cockney, was on the Danger List—­which circumstance availed nothing to depress his spirits.  In spite of considerable pain, he poked fun at the prospect of his own imminent demise, and was himself the chief offender against the edict of quietness which “Sister” had issued for her ward.  He would talk; and he would talk about undertakers, post-mortems, epitaphs and the details of a military funeral.  “That there top note of the Last Post on the bugle doesn’t ’arf sound proper,” he said—­a verdict which anyone who has heard this beautiful and inspired fanfare, which is the farewell above a soldier’s grave, and which ends on a soaring treble, will endorse.  “But,” he went on, “if the bugler’s ’ad a drop o’ somethin’ warm on the way to the cemetery, that there top note always reminds me of a ‘iccup.  An’ if ’e ’iccups over me, I shall wanter spit in ’is eye, blimey if I won’t.”

This persiflage had been going on for a couple of days and getting to be more and more elaborate and allusive, infecting the entire ward, so that the fact that the man was on the Danger List had become a kind of catchword amongst his fellows.  Entered, in all innocence, the clergyman.  ("The very bloke to put me up to all the tricks!”—­from the irreverent one.) At the same moment a walking patient, also a cockney, who had been reading a newspaper, gave vent to a cry of feigned horror.  “Boys!” he announced, “it says ’ere there’s a shortage of timber!”

Guffaws greeted this sally.  Everyone saw the innuendo at once—­everyone except the clergyman, and when he grasped the point, that Ol’ Chum So-and-So was on the Danger List and a shortage of timber was supposed to imply that he might be done out of a coffin, he was visibly shocked.  Perhaps he did not understand cockney humour....  However, one may add that our irrepressible friend, at the moment of writing, is off the Danger List (albeit only after a protracted struggle with the Enemy at whom he jeered), and is now contriving to be as funny about life as he was funny—­and fearless—­about Death.

I caught sight to-day of another cockney acquaintance of mine, whose Christian name is Bill, trundling himself down the hospital drive in a wheeled chair.  Perched on the knee of his one leg, with its feet planted on the stump which is all that is left of the other, was his child, aged four.  Beside him walked his wife, resplendent in a magenta blouse and a hat with green and pink plumes.