Now that we are slack, of course, I have much more chance of talking to the men, and they tell me many tales of the fighting, and of the rough time they have had at the front; but you will hear plenty of that from the men who have gone home.
I am beginning to have many grateful letters from our patients' friends at home.
There has been some delay about our pay lately, and some of the sisters who were lodging here had not received any since they left England, so were not able to pay their mess bills, and I had to pay various mess accounts when I got back from my run up-country, and began to feel rather anxious as to whether I could go on feeding my large party of sisters; but now the pay has turned up, so we have got straight again; and the Government give us various allowances—Colonial allowance, and for mess, servants, fuel, &c., so we are feeling rather well off.
We are much enjoying a big package of papers that the Red Cross Society now send up to us each week; whole weeks of Times, Daily Mail, Daily Graphic, Daily Telegraph, Standard, Illustrated London News, Army and Navy, &c. They are the greatest boon to the whole camp.
The men point out to me the "pretty boys" in the illustrated papers when they see any pictures of soldiers, as, by comparison, they all look so thin and rough out here.
XXXVI
Pinetown, Natal,
September 1900.
Now we are really getting busy again. Patients keep arriving, sometimes small parties, sometimes large.