Virginia suggested she should try a rather less heating soap; but she was drowned by Miss Thresher, who said firmly, “Borax; that’s what you ought to send to the troops. Not only would it soften the water for them, poor things—and no one knows better than I do what awfully hard stuff that German water is; nearly scraped my skin off when I went up the Rhine two years ago—but they would find it so useful to put in with their woollen things that we’ve been knitting them, to keep out the moth.”
My reminder that our troops were not as yet, alas! drawing their water from German cisterns was unnoticed; for the mere mention of moth produced extraordinary animation. Was borax good? Weren’t they a perfect nuisance? and so on. I said I always put it in with my furs, and never had a moth near them.
“I wonder if that’s what they put with Queen Mary’s furs,” said Mrs. Brash. “I never saw more lovely sables than those she had on when she came to the hospital yesterday.”
Miss Thresher verified this last statement, absolutely superb they were, and Miss Thresher had a right to speak, for the Queen had bowed straight at her, as she stood on the kerb, “as near to her as I am to you.”
Miss Quirker said that for her part she didn’t think there was another woman in the world so gracious as Queen Mary—except of course Queen Alexandra. She would bow to anyone she saw, no matter _how_ shabby they were.
Mrs. Brash hurriedly said what she so much admired in Queen Alexandra was her figure.
Miss Quirker continued, “Yes, and speaking of corsets I want to tell you of another economy besides doing without sugar to help the nation. You should buy your corsets several sizes larger than usual, and then when they are getting worn, you can turn them upside down and wear them the other way up. It’s so saving.”
Ursula said she quite believed it, because she knew, if she turned her long corsets upside down, they would reach high enough up to support the military collar at the back of her neck, and thus save boning.
I felt it was high time we got back to “Antizeptics,” and suggested that we should put something in the first column of the schedule, which was headed: “Things to place in readiness beforehand.”
Mrs. Brash announced that she wasn’t ever going to take her clothes off any more till the war was over, if this was the sort of goings-on we were to expect.