When once the "Suggestions" had been passed officially, it was within her power, by the simple expedient of laying in a stock of early copies, to prevent a moment's further delay. She used the power; and could not deny herself a few genial taunts at her official friends. "I beg to inform you," she wrote to Captain Galton at the War Office (Aug. 8), "that by the first mail after signature I sent off by H.M.'s book-post, at an enormous expense (I have a good mind to charge it to you!), to Sir John Lawrence direct no end of copies of _Suggestions_ (also to the Presidency Commissions); and that, as he is always more ready to hear than you are to pray (you sinners!), I have not the least doubt that they will have been _put in execution_ long before the India Office has even begun to send them."[33] She was not far wrong; six or seven weeks elapsed before the official copies were sent,[34] and meanwhile Miss Nightingale was able to get in another gibe. She heard from Sir John Lawrence that he had ordered the _Suggestions_ to be reprinted in India. "It might be as well," she wrote to the War Office, "to hurry your copies for the India Office, who will otherwise receive them first from India." [33] This was no idle taunt. The Government of India had already put in force some of the recommendations of the Royal Commission before it had officially received copies of the Report: see above, p. 34 and _n._ [34] Miss Nightingale conducted a secret inquiry, which would have done credit to a detective-inspector, into the causes of this delay. According to "information received," the first cause was that the final printing order was delayed while communications went to and fro between the War Office and the India Office upon the number of copies required. Then the supply ultimately ordered by the latter passed leisurely from one sub-department to another. Finally, the stock reposed a while at a warehouse across the water, until there were sufficient official papers to fill certain regulation cases of a regulation size. IV