16. A large tea-urn and boiling water.
17. A saucepan, containing three eggs nicely done.
18. A quarter of a pound of best Epping butter.
19. A brown loaf.
"And if he hadn't enough now for a good breakfast, I should like to know who ever had one?"
When I was your age, I never tired of reading about this breakfast; and then there was that other wonderful day when the bag was "grown so long that the Prince could not help remarking it. He went to it, opened it, and what do you think he found in it?
"A splendid long gold-handled, red-velvet-scabbarded cut-and-thrust sword, and on the sheath was embroidered 'ROSALBA FOREVER!'"
But I am not writing the "Rose and the Ring"; I wish I were!
So, as I said, all good and comforting things came in those first days out of the Fairy Florence's bag—I mean ship. She hired a house close by the hospital, and set up a laundry, with every proper and sanitary arrangement, and there, every week, five hundred shirts were washed, besides other garments. But now came a new difficulty. Many of the soldiers had no clothes at all save the filthy and ragged ones on their backs; what was to become of them while their shirts were washed and mended? The ship bag gave another hop (at least I should think it would have, for pure joy of the good it was doing), and out came ten thousand shirts; and for the first time since they left the battlefield the sick and wounded men were clean and comfortable.
But the Lady-in-Chief knew that her fairy stores were not of the kind that renew themselves; and having once got matters into something like decent order and comfort in the hospital, she turned quietly and resolutely to do battle with the monster Red Tape.