When, after
many weeks, she was strong enough to travel, she was implored to
return to England, but she utterly refused. She would not go
back, she said, before the last of the soldiers had left Scutari.
This happy moment had almost arrived, when suddenly the
smouldering hostilities of the medical authorities burst out into
a flame. Dr. Hall's labours had been rewarded by a K.C.B--
letters which, as Miss Nightingale told Sidney Herbert, she could
only suppose to mean 'Knight of the Crimean Burial-Grounds'-- and
the honour had turned his head. He was Sir John, and he would be
thwarted no longer. Disputes had lately arisen between Miss
Nightingale and some of the nurses in the Crimean hospitals. The
situation had been embittered by rumours of religious
dissensions, while the Crimean nurses were Roman Catholics, many
of those at Scutari were suspected of a regrettable propensity
towards the tenets of Dr. Pusey. Miss Nightingale was by no means
disturbed by these sectarian differences, but any suggestion that
her supreme authority over all the nurses with the Army was, no
doubt, enough to rouse her to fury; and it appeared that Mrs.
Bridgeman, the Reverend Mother in the Crimea, had ventured to
call that authority in question. Sir John Hall thought that his
opportunity had come, and strongly supported Mrs.
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