One evening, I passed a cell where they gave out unmistakable evidence of their presence. I called to one of the sweeps,--
"Ellen, the gardener has made a mistake! He has put the onions, for the soup to-morrow, in one of those cells. Won't you take them out, and put them in the cellar. If one of the other Matrons, or the Deputy, were to come in, they would smell them as plainly as I do, and they might think you put them there for some one to eat privately, and get you reported."
That hint was sufficient; I never smelt onions in the cells again.
The officers professed to take no report from one prisoner against another; but when they got angry with a prisoner, and wished to remove her from their department, they did not scruple to avail themselves of information obtained in that way. Berry, my white-washer, was an apt agent. Sly, artful, and treacherous, she pretended sympathy, and got possession of knowledge which was Mrs. Hardhack's principal clew to find out what was going on in the kitchen and prison.
The other women understood, and avoided her. That made her angry, and the more watchful and treacherous.
One day she found a biscuit from the officers' table in a cell. She reasoned that Flannagan must have put it there, because Flannagan and the girl in whose cell she found it were great friends. That morning the Housekeeper had been fretted with Flannagan, and Berry had got wind of it. Here was the opportunity to exercise her vocation. She slipped the biscuit under her apron, took it into the officers' kitchen, and showed it to the Housekeeper.
Flannagan must have done it, because she had given offense in the morning; and she was forthwith dismissed to the shop.
A woman who came in a few days before, on a long sentence, had been discovered to be a nice needle-woman, smart and pretty; whereas Flannagan was plain and slow. Occasion was thus made to effect the change, so my women said. And what they failed to find out in that institution was beyond investigation.
The day commenced at odds. In the morning Mrs. Hardhack came flying into the kitchen, and demanded, from O'Brien, something for one of her girls to eat.
"She has fainted away for the want of food! She has had no breakfast! How did you dare to keep her breakfast from her!"