Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/278

268 the charge of the linen room was the only thing they were not afraid to undertake.

"I can keep things in order, and mend, and make out lists, and give out clothes," said Netty; "and that 's about all I can do and be sure of doing it well."

"I think so too," said Sarah, "and we 'll take it together, and then we can change with each other and have a day's rest now and then; we shall not be very busy, and one or the other of us can go about in the wards and write letters for the men, or help the nurses. But I would n't take any responsibility about them for anything."

"Nor I either," said Netty.

But when they saw Clara Winthrop, who had never in her life cooked anything more nutritious than sponge-cake, and who was used, in her father's house, to having four servants at her command, gravely assuming the entire control of the diet kitchen; and flighty Mrs. Kate Seely, who could not even be trusted with her own baby when it had croup, installed as head nurse in one of the largest wards, Sarah and Netty looked at each other, and said, in the expressive New England vernacular,—

"Did you ever!"

And when they saw, day by day, the sentry opposite their linen room door, simply overborne and disregarded by numbers of most respectable women of their own acquaintance filing in, with baskets of all sorts of edibles, proper and improper, which