By October she was ready to answer Annie Childs’s thoughtful inquiry about her wardrobe. There were two successive letters two weeks apart that consisted almost wholly of the answers she made to the question wherewithal she should be clothed. Lest we should suppose Clara Barton to be an institution and not a wholly feminine woman, it is interesting to notice her concern that these dresses be of proper material and suitably made. The dresses arrived with rather surprising promptness, and they fitted with only minor alterations which she described in detail to Annie. Toward the end of October she had occasion to write again to Annie thanking the friends who had remembered her so kindly, and expressing in her letter the feeling, which she so often recorded in her diary, that she was not doing as much as she ought to merit the kindness of her friends. In another letter a few days later, she told of one use she was making of her riding-skirt; she was furnishing a hospital at Fort Mitchell, seven miles away, and her ride to that hospital combined both business and pleasure. About this time she gathered some trophies and sent to Worcester for the fair. They were exhibited and sold to add to the resources of the good people who were providing in various ways for the comfort of the soldiers. At this time she wrote to other organizations who had sent her supplies, telling of the good they had done. But again she fell upon a time of relative inactivity. There were no more battles to be fought immediately. She again wondered if she had any right to stay in a place where everything was so comfortable, especially as Annie Childs had written to her that the Worcester and Oxford women would not permit her to bear any part of the expense for the new clothes that had been made for her. About this time her brother David received a letter from Stephen which showed that it was useless for her to stay where she was with any present expectation of securing his relief. He was still remaining with his property unmolested by both sides, and thought it better to continue there than run what seemed to him the larger risks of leaving.