But of the commissariat we shall say more presently.
The secondary necessities of life, fire and light, were not forthcoming
with quite the same promptness. There was a twilight period in many
houses before lamps were furnished in sufficient abundance. The place of
fuel was supplied by the genial weather of the first week; and perhaps
few were aware of what we were doing without. Next week the east winds
and the coal arrived together.
The hotel laundry found the task it had undertaken beyond its strength.
No wonder. Three hundred sets of _articles de linge_ reach a figure of
which our hosts had hardly grasped the significance. We are sometimes
told that Gaels and Cymry cannot count. At any rate, when the bales of
linen came pouring in upon them, heaping every table and piling all the
floor, and still flowing in faster than room could be found, the
laundresses, brave workers though they were, felt that the game was lost:
They stand in pause where they should first begin,
And all neglect.
One poor nymph was discovered by a compassionate visitor dissolved in
tears over her wash-tub.
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