(Even now, when the scene is
mainly feminine, I believe differences of opinion continue to arise, but
doubtless the language in which they are conducted is seemlier if no
less deadly.) The store-orderly had a marvellous eye for the difference
between two kinds of shirts which are worn by our patients. One kind has
a pleat in the back, the other kind hasn't; and I confess I occasionally
transposed them, on the form. It was fatal to do so. There was a
separate line for each brand of shirt and there must be a separate
entry. The store-orderly's trained powers of observation could see that
pleat, or the absence of it, even as the shirt slid across his line of
vision in a torrent of other shirts. His hand shot out and grabbed it
back from joining the heap on the floor within the counter. His pencil
poised itself from the ticking-off of the items on the form. "Wrong
again!" he would cry, sometimes in anguish and sometimes in anger. And
there was nothing for it but to apologise. To keep on good terms with
the various orderlies in the various stores was the secret of making
one's life worth living--a secret even profounder than that of keeping
on good terms with Sister: to be sure it was (though she seldom realised
it) the very foundation of the art of keeping on good terms with her.
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