numbers in the appointed columns, occasionally made a
wrong guess? Then there were eight sorts of "Cloths"--tablecloth,
tray-cloth, distinctive cloth, and so forth. (To how many lay minds does
"distinctive cloth" convey any meaning?) Counterpanes you would think to
be obvious enough; but that remarkable compilation, the _Check Book for
Hospital Linen_ ("Printed for H.M. Stationery Office...." etc.),
recognises four varieties. It also allows for four varieties of sheets,
four of aprons and four of trousers. Of towels it knows six.

Each ward has a certain stock of linen in its cupboard. That stock can
only be kept at the proper level by strict barter of a soiled object for
a clean duplicate of the same object. As there are three hundred and
sixty-five days in the year on which this transaction occurs, and sixty
wards' bundles of linen to be dealt with by both the Dirty Linen
Department and the Clean Linen 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 should have
possessed. Even if Sister fails to pounce promptly on the evidence of
the loss, the quartermaster's dread stocktaking will ultimately find you
out. Your cupboard declines to correspond with his book-entries. And
there is trouble brewing, in consequence. (But indeed, if the loss of a
single duster were the sole crime revealed on stocktaking day, you would
be fortunate.)

The orderly, with an obese bundle of washing on his back, plods from the
ward to the Dirty Linen Store at quarter to nine every morning. I say he
"plods" because the bundle is generally too heavy for transportation at
a rapid pace. Twenty sheets are usually but a part of the bundle; and
twenty sheets are alone no light burden. Between his teeth--both his
hands being occupied with the balancing of the bundle--he carries his
chit: that indispensable list. Arrived at the store he dumps the bundle
on the ground, opens it, and pitches its contents 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. Fo