Well, I think darkly, they will be sorry presently. I have no intention or
expectation of getting better, and when they see me a fair young corpse
then they'll know.

Already I loathe the Two Hundred. Not that I believe for a minute the story
of my own disease being the same as their miserable little complaints. In
recurring periods of conscious thought I go through the list of things I
know for a fact I have got--rheumatic fever, sciatica, lumbago, toothache,
neuritis, bronchitis, laryngitis, tonsilitis, neuralgia, gastritis, catarrh
of several kinds, heart disease and inflammation (or possibly congestion)
of the lungs. I shall think of some more presently, if my nurse will let me
alone and not keep on worrying me with her "Just drink this." Bother the
woman! Why doesn't she get off the earth? What's the use of my swallowing
that man's filthy medicine when he doesn't know what's the matter with me?

I hate everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which
rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When
in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still
billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and
German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. _Two Hundred German
eider-downs!_

The firelight flickers weirdly about the room and I try to count the
shadows. But before I begin I know the answer--TWO HUNDRED.

I drift into a nightmare of Two Hundred elusive cabbages which I am
endeavouring to plant in my new allotment, where a harsh fate forces me to
dig and _dig_ and DIG, and, as a natural consequence, also to ache and
_ache_ and ACHE.