[The author’s sister Mary survived diphtheria after admission to the Pill Hospital ‘where the disease was being treated’, p. 7]

One day during the time that Mary was away at the `Pill Hospital I left the lane to go to Sunday school as usual and as I reached the end of the lane I heard music. There on the corner of St. Michael’s Hill and Horfield Road outside the Scotchman and his Pack, a public house, were a group of war veteran musicians. I was too young to realise that they were [World War I] victims of course but I stood looking at them while they played and I noted that they were all injured in some way, some with arms and legs missing and one with something wrong with his eyes […] On impulse I dropped my halfpenny [intended for the church collection] in the cap and turned away. They had said nothing but one of them came up beside me took my hand and led me over to Mrs Luke’s sweet shop where he bought not a halfpenny worth but a whole pennyworth of sweets and handed them to me with a smile. I was amazed at this but I accepted the sweets and made off down the hill to Magpie Park. Sunday school didn’t see me that day.