For a year and more the question of the Public Health Service in India had slumbered, so far as organization was concerned. Sir John Lawrence's dispatch had been lost at the India Office for some months (p. 109). Then, when it had been found and Miss Nightingale had drafted the reply, Lord de Grey had gone out of office before the reply could be sent (p. 110). She had opened communications with his successor, Lord Cranborne (p. 114); but his stay at the India Office was brief, for when Disraeli's Franchise Bill was introduced, he resigned. He was succeeded by Sir Stafford Northcote, with whom as yet Miss Nightingale had no acquaintance. She had been diligent in writing to Sir John Lawrence, who continued to ask her advice and send her papers; but she had held her hand on this side. The reason was that all her friends told her that "the Tories would be out in a week." Dr. Sutherland, greatly daring, went further and talked treason against Sir John Lawrence: "He is our worst enemy," and "we had better wait." Miss Nightingale ascribed this ribaldry to a desire of Dr. Sutherland to be off cholera-hunting in the Mediterranean, and reproached him in some impromptu rhymes.[91] Sir John Lawrence was her hero. If he did amiss sometimes (as she had to admit), she put it down, I suppose, to his Council, with whom he was notoriously not on good terms; whatever was done aright was his doing. And meanwhile the weeks passed and the Tories did not go out; they looked, on the contrary, very much like staying in. Miss Nightingale determined to wait no longer. She announced her determination in a letter to Captain Galton (May 28, 1867). He was in touch with Indian sanitary business as a member of the War Office Sanitary Committee, to which such business was often referred, and she attached considerable weight to his judgment. "Our Indian affairs," she wrote, "are getting as drunk as they can be"; she was resolved to have them put straight. She had been "strongly advised to communicate direct with Sir Stafford Northcote"; advised, I imagine, by Mr. Jowett (for was not Sir Stafford a Balliol man, and therefore specially amenable to reason?) What did Captain Galton advise? He agreed that things were not going well, and was glad that she meant to move. He would give her an introduction, if she liked, to Sir Stafford, and he advised her to see Sir Bartle Frere, "as I fancy you could make him useful." He had just returned from the governorship of Bombay, and had been given a seat on the India Council in London. A fortnight later (June 14) he and Miss Nightingale met:--