that of his colleagues were in peril every day. A month intervened before the next move was taken. On June 11 Miss Nightingale was asked by Lord de Grey, through Captain Galton, to develop her views further and to draw up, in consultation with Dr. Sutherland, "a draft letter which he could submit to the Indian Council as his reply to Sir John Lawrence." The letter was to take the form either of "a practical scheme to propose to Sir John Lawrence for the sanitary administration of India" or of "such a description of the requirements as would draw from Sir J. L. a practical scheme." It was suggested that perhaps it would be best if the letter (1) shadowed out the requirements and (2) sketched a scheme of administration for carrying them out. This was a large order and took time. On June 19 Miss Nightingale sent in her draft. She was "24 hours" too late, for on June 18 the Government had been defeated. There was, however, a short period of grace owing to the absence of the Queen at Balmoral and to her unwillingness to accept Lord Russell's resignation.[69] Lord de Grey had no time to pass the letter through the Secretary of State's Council, but he did what he could. He left on record at the India Office, he told Miss Nightingale, a Minute[70] closely following the lines of her Memorandum. If his successor let the matter go to sleep again, Lord de Grey would be ready to call attention to it in Parliament. He assured Miss Nightingale that his interest in such questions would remain as warm as ever, and as she was now more likely than he to know what was going on, he begged her to keep him informed. [69] In one of Mr. Jowett's letters to Miss Nightingale (June 1866) there is this story of Lord Russell. "On the evening of the crisis he was not to be found. He had gone down to Richmond to hear the Nightingales (your cousins)! 'And the provoking thing,' as he wrote to a friend, 'was that they did not sing that night.'" [70] The substance of it may be found at p. 11 of the _Memorandum_ (as cited above, p. 34 _n._). III