pudding-basin. I have tried scraping with a knife blade, I have tried
every reasonable form of friction, and I can simply state as a fact from
my own personal experience (perhaps I am unfortunate) that those metal
pudding-basins of ours would frequently yield to nothing less powerful
than sandpaper.

I need scarcely say that sandpaper was not supplied by the deities of
the Dry Store. Sandpaper did not come within their purview. It had no
recognised use in hospital. Therefore it did not exist. But, observing
that a succession of metal pudding-basins would be an insupportable
prospect without sandpaper, I laid in a stock of sandpaper, paying for
the same out of my own private purse. It was a cheap investment. Never
have earnings of mine been better spent. Moreover, having once hit on
the notion of giving myself a lift illegitimately, so to speak, I added
to the smuggling-in of sandpaper a secret purchase of soda. Except that
our scrub-ladies, each and all, discovering that the Dry Store's
allowance of this priceless chemical had at last apparently been
generous, caused it to fly at a disconcerting pace, and as a result
sometimes left me short of it, my career as a washer-up afterwards
became more comfortable.

I shall never like washing-up. In the communal households of the future
I shall heave coal, sift cinders, dig potatoes, dust furniture or scour
floors--any task will be mine which, though it makes me dirty, does not
make me greasily dirty. But if I must wash-up, if I must study the
idiosyncrasies of cold fat, treacly plates, frying-pans which have
sizzled dripping-toast on the gas-ring, frozen gravy, and pudding-basins
with burnt milk-skins filmed to their sides, I shall be comparatively
undismayed. For sandpaper is not yet (like the news posters) abolished;
and soda--although I hear its price has risen several hundred per