A form, of course, had to be filled in. (The army provides a form for everything.) This form presents a catalogue of eighty-one separate items, from "Blankets" ("Child's," "Infant's"--I do not know what is the difference between them, and I never had to deal with either--"G.S."--whatever that may be--and "White") to "Waist-coats, Strait." It distinguishes between ten kinds of "Cases"--pillow-cases, paillasse-cases, and the like: for example, there are "barrack" bolster-cases and "hospital" bolster-cases; and you must not confound "hospital" mattress-cases with "officers'" mattress-cases. You are misled if you imagine that the heading "Cases" has exhausted the possibilities which appeared to be latent in that noun; for, in addition to the ten unqualified "Cases" there are seven more, defined as "Cases, slip." Can you wonder that the orderly, presented with a bin-full of confused and crumpled objects ready for the wash, and told to count them and enter their numbers in the appointed columns, occasionally made a wrong guess? Then there were eight sorts of "Cloths"--tablecloth, tray-cloth, distinctive cloth, and so forth. (To how many lay minds does "distinctive cloth" convey any meaning?) Counterpanes you would think to be obvious enough; but that remarkable compilation, the _Check Book for Hospital Linen_ ("Printed for H.M. Stationery Office...." etc.), recognises four varieties. It also allows for four varieties of sheets, four of aprons and four of trousers. Of towels it knows six. Each ward has a certain stock of linen in its cupboard. That stock can only be kept at the proper level by strict barter of a soiled object for a clean duplicate of the same object. As there are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year on which this transaction occurs, and sixty wards' bundles of linen to be dealt with by both the Dirty Linen Department and the Clean Linen Department on each of those days, it is clear that exactitude in the filling-in of the form aforementioned becomes an affair of almost nightmare importance. Bring back from the Clean Linen Store three dusters instead of the four dusters which you previously handed in at the Dirty Linen Store, and your cupboard will, to the end of time, be short of one duster which it should have possessed. Even if Sister fails to pounce promptly on the evidence of the loss, the quartermaster's dread stocktaking will ultimately find you out. Your cupboard declines to correspond with his book-entries. And there is trouble brewing, in consequence. (But indeed, if the loss of a single duster were the sole crime revealed on stocktaking day, you would be fortunate.)