chit, blacklead for the stoves, metal-polish for the brass, rags for
cleaning the floor, floor-polish, one box of matches, bath-brick, soft
soap, and--soda. It is an extraordinary chemical, soda. Before I became
a ward orderly I had no idea of the remarkable properties of soda. A
handful of soda in boiling water, and behold the grease dissolve meekly
from the nastiest dinner-tin! It was miraculous. When a pitying
scrub-lady first showed me the trick I thought that all my troubles were
at an end. Soda made the ward-kitchen seem like heaven. Alas, the
supply of soda considered sufficient by the Dry Store authorities never
lasted beyond Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the
dinner-tin had to be cleaned out not by alkaline agency, but by sheer
slogging hard labour. And when at last I stood it on edge to dry, and
thought to go off duty with a clear conscience, I generally found that I
had overlooked the waiting pudding-basin.

On the whole I am inclined to pronounce the pudding-basin a more
obdurate utensil than even the dinner-tin. The pudding-basin, however,
only appeared every second morning. On duff days (duff being served in
the same tin as the meat and vegetables, though in a separate
compartment) we had no pudding. By pudding I mean milk pudding--rice or
sago or tapioca. Now a milk pudding, such as those my patients received,
though perhaps it was looked askance at in the nursery, is food which,
as an adult, I am far from despising. Rice pudding I have come with
maturer years to regard as a delicacy. Sago and tapioca I still eat
rather with amiable resignation than from choice. But any milk pudding,
as I now know, has a most vicious habit of cleaving to the dish in which
it was cooked. Rice is the least evil offender. The others are
absolutely wicked. To clean oleaginous scum from a dinner-tin is not
easy, but it is a mere bagatelle compared with cleaning the scorched
high-tide-mark of tapioca or sago from the shores of a large metal