The Yellow and White Agony. 361 



nurseries. On the cars she made friends with the coloured porters, 

 who would appear with cans of hot water just before the children's 

 bed time, and nurse, tying her apron round her, would in some way 

 manage to give the children their evening baths quite comfortably 

 in those small inadequate lavatories reserved for women on the 

 transcontinental sleepers. The children's hot milk and beef tea 

 and other food was always ready for them at the right time ; she 

 had a thousand little ways of keeping them clean, well fed, and 

 amused during long and trying journeys. At one time, having left 

 the two children with their grandparents, intending to join them in 

 the autumn, we found we should have to stay the winter in 

 Victoria. We wrote to nurse to bring the children, aged four and 

 three, out to us, and at the end of the twenty-one days' journey 

 she handed us the babies safe and sound, with the complacent 

 " Here we are, ma'am," as if she had merely just stepped across 

 the street with them instead of having brought them a journey of 

 some 7000 miles. 



