extent) throughout our English war-hospitals. One of my first tasks in the morning was the collecting and classification of my ward's dirty linen. The work ca

intimate trafficking with pillow-cases, sheets, counterpanes and tablecloths. In the reckoning of these he is apt to make mistakes and to lapse into a casualness which, in a woman

ases; and you must not confound "hospital" mattress-cases with "officers'" mattress-cases. You are misled if you imagine that the heading "Cases" has exhausted the possibilities which appeared to be latent in that noun; for, in addition to the ten unqualified "Cases" there are seven more, defined as "Cases, slip." Can you wonder that the orderly, presented with a bin-full of confused and crumpled objects ready for the wash, and told to count them and enter their numbers in the appointed columns

en Department on each of those days, it is clear that exactitude in the filling-in of the form aforementioned becomes an affair of almost nightmare importance. Bring back from the Clean Linen Store three dusters instead of the four dusters which you previously handed in at the Dirty Linen Store, and your cupboard will, to the end of time, be short of one duster which it shoul

piecemeal over a counter to one of the staff of the store. One by one the objects are named and counted aloud, as they fly across the counter, the staff orderly simultaneously checking the list and keeping an eye on what he is receiving. For we may, by guile, palm off on him one sheet as two. It can be done, by means of a certain legerdemain which comes with practice. Or we may have received from the Dry Store, amongst the rags meant for cleaning purposes, a couple of quite worn-out socks, not a pair, and long past placing on human feet: the

rvation could see that pleat, or the absence of it, even as the shirt slid across his line of vision in a torrent of other shirts. His hand shot out and grabbed it back from joining the heap on the floor within the counter. His pencil poised itself from the ticking-off of the items on the form. "Wrong again!" he would cry, sometimes in anguish and sometimes in anger. And there was nothing for it but to apologise. To keep on good terms with the various orderlies in the various stores was the secret of making one's life worth living-a secret even profounder than that of keeping on good terms with Sister: to be sure it was (though she seldom realised it) the very foundation of

uge department whose system of book-keeping is enough to make the brain reel (for here sheets, etc., are dealt with not in dozens but in thousands), had in the interim received your chit from their colleagues of the Dirty Linen Store. These l

crowd of fellow-orderlies similarly employed) run through the whole of its contents, computing them with precision: twenty sheets, twelve pillow-cases, nine bolster-cases-it is only too easy to miss the difference in the sizes of these-seventeen hand-towels, two operating-aprons, eleven handkerchiefs, ten pyjama trousers, ten sleeping-jackets, and so on. When you had ticked-off all these separate items in the l

ones I had taken away. And Sister was exceedingly cross. The particular Sister whose drudge I was at that period was rather apt to be cross; and this was one of her crossest days. She threatened to "report" me, and in fact did so. I was not-as she seemed to expect-shot at dawn. I merely underwent a formal reproof from a high authority who perhaps (but this is a surmise) knew Sister's idiosyncrasies even better than I did. There remained, neverthel

ount all the pillow-cases, in and out of use, in my ward, and bring him the total, he would compare the said total with the figures in his ledger. Those figur

natured probationer, who sympathised with me in my difficulties (she too had suffered), counted them also. A convalescent patient interested himself in the problem: he also went the round of

e till he came to the entry of pillow-cases opposite to

tead of having three pillow-cases

d on behalf of her ward. The sergeant, growing grey in the solution of these abstruse mathematical and psychological mysteries, had suspected this Sister all along. He enlightened me. She had recently been transferred from another ward-and in her going had (against th

afterwards bade her farewell, on her departure to overseas spheres of activity. But she had at least afforded me a lesson in the importance of accuracy over my dirty and clean linen bundles. Never again would I risk the ordeal of a surprise stocktaking; nev