Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/405

 CARE OF THE SICK AND WOUNDED. 361 ing long and zealously served as the very ' right chap. ' hand ' of her father (whilst Bishop of Norwich) ' in bringing to bear his large measures for the good of the poor, she soon disclosed great capac- ity for both organising and transacting executive work, whilst also in her own gentle way she knew how to rule. She was not without the experience that foreign travel affords ; and, when a newly -formed band of Sisters and salaried nurses were about to be sent out from home to our hospitals in the Levant, she consented to be placed at their head, and talce charge of them during the journey.(^) This was all that Miss Stanley at first had promised or intended to do ; but she found, upon reaching the Bosphorus, that the ladies and salaried nurses brought thither under her guid- ance would not be received at Scutari {where alone for the business of ' nursing ' there was any apt leadership ready), and must therefore, if she were to quit them, be left without any chief. Could she see them in that strait disband, when she knew but too well that their services were bitterly needed for the shiploads and shiploads of stricken soldiery brought down day by day from the seat of war ? Under stress of the question thus put by her own exacting conscience, or perhaps by the simpler commandment of her generous heart, she formed the heroic resolve which was destined to govern lier life throughout the long dismal period of which she then knew not the end. Instead of returning to England, and leaving on the shores of the Bosphorus her