Mind ye, I've passed much time of late years in hospitals.

I've talked to these laddies when they'd be lying there, thinking--thinking.

They'd a' the time in the world to think after they began to get better.

And they'd be knowing, then, that they would live--that the bullet or the shell or whatever it micht be that had dropped them had not finished them.
And they'd know, too, by then, that the limb was lost for aye, or the een or whatever it micht be.
Noo, think of a laddie coming hame.

He's discharged frae the hospital and frae the army.