Still the pile did not decrease. Still we sent for packing-cases to the large furniture emporiums. By tea-time the number was much augmented, and I wired desperately to Sir Thomas, begging him to come and see me on his way home. He did so. His motor could not get up the street, for the newspapers had begun to mention the circumstance, and a crowd of sightseers and idlers had come to look on.
“I never saw such a sight,” he exclaimed; “the place is like a railway emporium.”
“I have a confession to make,” I said. “I asked you at luncheon-time to take forty cases. Dare I tell you I now have altogether eighty-five packages standing on the pavement, waiting to go somewhere?”
“Eighty-five!” he exclaimed. “But the Simla is full already.”
“They can’t stop here,” I said, almost in tears, for really the thing was becoming too serious. “The cases won’t even come inside the door. I have nowhere to put them, and they can’t remain in the street in case it rains, even if the police do guard them all night.”
They went to the docks that night. Then I went to bed feeling that it was over.
But not a bit of it. The very same thing began again next day, and another friend—Sir Frederick Green, chairman of the Orient—had to be appealed to, to convey the next consignment to Naples, which he most generously did.
To give some idea of the enormous magnitude of this undertaking—twelve dozen-dozen yards of rope were used to tie the cases, and twice I sent out for four shillings and sixpence worth of nails for fastening the lids. Two whole quart bottles of ink were used for painting on the addresses; and three dust-carts—special dust-carts—were required at the end of the first day to take away the refuse of string, cardboard-boxes, and brown paper. Never can I thank my twenty-seven willing helpers sufficiently. There were seldom less than fifteen at a time unpacking, sorting, and repacking in the street in all that bitter cold. They forgot personal suffering and backaches, working right cheerily and generously all those anxious days.
Buried in parcels did I call it? Swamped in parcels, drowned in parcels! Probably about three thousand of them.
Twenty thousand garments were got off by Friday night, when I had already implored the public through the Press to stop sending any more. Twenty thousand garments in reply to my appeal for a few things to send in “a box”!