I saw her first from a painful bed,
Where I lay fresh from a fearful fall,
With a broken leg and a broken head,
In the accident ward of the hospital.
Some women are hard as the road to grace,
That natural sinners are doomed to tread,
And as beautiful as a camel's face —
But our head nurse was the limit, they said.

You have seen some of the sort, no doubt —
The buck-teeth kind with the three-haired mole:
There are British lady tourists about
(Conducted by Cook from pole to pole).
You've felt the blast of their monocle,
You've heard them asking: " What doo you mean? "
Had these been gathered together and — well,
Then our head nurse would have been the queen.

She walked like a trestle, with toes turned in,
And she was as gaunt as a drought-baked horse,
With big buck teeth and a downy chin —
And the three-haired mole — and the nose, of course.
She had us there where we could not strike,
And she could punish in many ways too;
She was hated by nurses and patients alike —
But she knew more than the doctors knew.

And they would respectfully wait for her,
In a desperate case where the chance was slim,
To take her place in the " Theatre "
Of the hospital with its secrets grim.
Of many a ghastly grapple with death —
When doctors paled — she could tell no doubt:
Of the hours she fought for the fluttering breath.
Yes! — she knew mankind , inside and out.

Of course my heart must get broken there
(Though I had a wife and kids in the town)
For a pretty young nurse with auburn hair
And eyes of the deepest, richest brown.
We called the old head nurse " The Hen " — (I beg
You'll pardon me if I stick to fact) —
I reckon the head nurse saved my leg —
Though friends declare that my head's still cracked.

And, speaking of nurses, now's my chance
To put in a word for the sisterhood,
For they have little or no romance;
The work is grand, but their hearts are good.
'Tis sometimes better, and sometimes worse,
But, when the Head is a Tartar, I know,
Between the patients and that head nurse
The nurses have got a hard row to hoe.

They must be angel and slave in one,
Servant and student — and gritty! you bet,
And they cannot be sick till their work is done,
And — you'd open your eyes at the wages they get.
O they must stick to it, early and late,
They must be ever a class apart
From human feelings like love and hate.
(Though I once knew a nurse with a broken heart.)

The same dull routine day after day
The sores unsightly, the fetid breath,
The shrivelled limbs and the faces grey
When the air is laden with sordid death.
The skip at the beck of a doctor lout,
The run for the screen — or whatever it be,
The same dull patients, week in, week out,
" Till our brains get rusty, " a nurse told me.

The striving evermore to be kind,
The doubt if a patient dies or lives,
" Because we never know what's behind
In the ignorance of the relatives. "
A few may chance as a private nurse
To marry for love or marry for gold,
But as years go over the lot grows worse,
" For nobody wants a nurse when she's old. "

A tragedy fades like the fading scar
And marks of stitches above your eye,
And I've seen much and I've travelled far
Since the day when I wished they would let me die.
" Back to the world again! " — Where were we —
O the Head Nurse! — We called her " The Hen " — Ah well!
Set your stage for a comedy,
For this is " The Tale of a Hen " I tell.

I lived in " Thelma " in Belgrave Street,
Off Belmont Park — 'Twas a good address
When sending a memo short and sweet
To the editors of a crawlsome press.
'Twas a four roomed shanty, built in a plain
Style of architecture — Australian quite;
The local pound was just down the lane,
The Mongolian Gardens were opposite.

We kept a servant, a stunted freak
I caught at a Government Bureau,
She might have been seventeen last week —
Or six and twenty for aught I know
She'd been trained backward! (of immigrant stock —
A midland county — I know no more)
She started each morning at six o'clock
By scrubbing a hole in the kitchen floor.

Intentions excellent. Short of breath,
Our trouble caused her the greatest distress —
She was known to the wife as Elizabeth
And known to me as " The Marchioness "
" Master's narrer " (she meant " The Boss " )
She'd say to the wife when I could not eat,
" He's nearly as narrer as father was;
I wish that master would take his meat. "

She never could understand at all
That this was a Land of Democracy.
She'd bully the " tradesmin " great and small
Till those sons of freedom appealed to me.
They had to " go round to the kitching door " —
Butcher and Baker, and Milk! no less —
A thing that they never had done before
But they all were afraid of the Marchioness.

You could always tell what she was thinking about,
That red-haired weed with a heart of gold.
When the duns came round and " Master " was out,
She'd spar like a good 'un without being told.
Empress or Peasant — Collie or cur —
Heart of a Female! — It's hard to tell —
I fancy we must have been kind to her
Or she wouldn't have stuck to us so well.

The sledge-hammer force of simplicity
And truth was hers by an ancient right,
Hard, practical kindness and sympathy,
And a great love somewhere — but out of sight.
Kiddies obeyed her , and, what is more,
They loved her and came to her early and late
And she'd dole out alms at her " kitching door "
With the air of a Dame at her castle gate.

" They never came singly " , to palace or tent,
Twins or troubles, or " human ills " ,
And I think that wherever a man pays rent
The same thing mostly applies to bills.
And so, one Monday, when all behind
With the rent (or ahead of it — which you will)
And the Butcher and Baker had been unkind —
And a story declined — little Joe fell ill.

The doctor came, and he shook his head
And he looked at the child for a moment or two;
He listened and nodded to what we said,
And told the wife what she must not do.
He said we must keep the child in bed —
(As if we'd stand him outside on his head —
It was bitter cold and 'twas raining too)
And then he wrote a prescription and fled —
A district doctor must earn his screw.

I looked in the kitchen — don't know for what —
The Marchioness there, with an altered face,
Was hurriedly making water hot
In every kettle and pan in the place.
She plucked a rug from her skimpy bed
And dragged in a tub on the bedroom floor,
And, when I protested, she only said,
" I know it, Master — I seen it before. "

The first night's battle was tough, I guess,
With only hot water and mustard to win it;
The wife, and I — and the Marchioness —
I reckon she didn't let death begin it.
The doctor came when we'd pulled Joe through —
'Twas sickly time, and he'd only a minute —
He squinted and sniffed as good doctors do
And prescribed a hot bath with mustard in it.

Ten o'clock in the morning found
Joe still doubtful, and in distress.
I was bracing up for the second round —
" Same time to-night, " said the Marchioness.
I felt that my face was drawn and white.
No doubt you'll think I'm a womanish one,
But have you ever been up all night
Fighting death for your first-born son?

Or seen your child in convulsions, you chaps?
I rose, and I went to the door at last
To look for the Unexpected perhaps —
And who should I see but the " Hen " go past!
In plain dress too — but you'd know her walk
If you saw her passing on Paradise track.
'Twas a desperate case — I don't want to talk —
I was clean knocked out, so I called her back.

She was having a holiday — first in her life —
And resting, of course, on her restless feet —
She was staying a week with her brother's wife
On the heights overlooking Belgrave Street.
This much I gathered — my wits were slow;
I was faint and ill, and as dull as a dunce;
But she took charge of the wife and Joe
And the Marchioness, " Thelma " and me at once.

The Marchioness looked at the Head Nurse hard;
And the Head Nurse looked at the Marchioness —
(So the wife whispered to me out in the yard)
Why they chummed up at once I never could guess.
We hadn't yet told the old Head Nurse about
How the Marchioness saved Joe from Paradise,
And to this very hour I could never make out
What those two saw in each other's eyes.

She packed the pair of us into a room
To sleep for an hour by the Blessed Grace.
And she sent the priestess of our old broom
For a lot of things from her brother's place.
By hidden signs that were known to men
(And known perhaps to Elizabeth)
And her hardening eyes — I could see that the " Hen "
Was bracing herself for a scrap with Death.

Ah, well! There's nothing to drivel about
In those grim battles without a sound.
All I need say is that Death went out,
Early and clean in the second round.
The " Hen " steered me to our guest chamber
(A stretcher there, and a chair, and shelf)
I fell on the mattress, pushed by her,
And slept like a dozen dead myself.

In the grey of the morning I crept by stealth
To listen and peep in the passage gloom,
And the cleverest nurse in the Commonwealth
Was sweeping and dusting the " dining room " .
Eyes of a hawk! She caught me, and said,
" What do you here in the dead of night?
Get on with your writing, or go to bed —
Your wife is asleep, and the boy's all right. "

Eyes half blinded with — Well, 'tis a poor
Unmanlike, unwriterlike thing to do.
I've had always a fancy, but couldn't be sure
That some of the tears were in her eyes too.
But she only muttered " Confound the man! "
Giving her duster a vicious twirl —
" Go back as quietly as you can;
Elizabeth is asleep — poor girl. "

(What of you, with your nurseries,
And dainty nurses, as bright as stars,
And prim trained maids to attend on these,
And doctors twain in their motor cars.
Death could tell you — He's not so bad:
A good old sport, though he loves his joke —
Of many a harder fight he had
With poverty and the hearts of folk.)

Long years ten, and the Nurse is dead,
Forgotten by hundreds she helped to live;
You gave her her uniform and her bread,
I gave her a headstone ('twas little to give).
But I want you to know that preachers and pugs,
Doctors and editors (publishers too),
Likewise spielers, and also mugs;
And nurses and poets have hearts — like you.
On the fair allotment where " Thelma " stood
A villa's been standing for quite a while,
The timber is hard Australian wood,
And it's built in the new Australian style.
Called " Thelma " (I wonder who she was at all?)
But one is there, you can easily guess —
A fearsome tyrant who rules us all,
And she's known to me as the Marchioness.