The next morning when we were returning, through the many halls of the building, single file, our huge boots ringing out on the stone floor, at one door a hospital superintendent stood and said to each one as she passed: “Any application for the doctor?” When it came to my turn, I saw that it was my friend from the hospital, but no look of recognition betrayed itself in her face. She put out her arm to stop me and wheeled me round to the back. When several others had passed her she turned to me, began quickly undoing my dress and said rapidly, but with still no look of recognition: “Well, have you been all right?” “Oh, yes,” I said, “but surely you are not going to look at it here?” She made no answer, but began to inspect me even more quickly. I insisted on turning my back on the long file which seemed never to end. She asked kindly questions, and said she would come and see the other wound that afternoon. She did not come, however, but sent one of the younger superintendents. She came once in the early morning, and it was very nice to see her again; it was the last time.
On one of the latter days a girl was wrongfully accused of laughing in chapel, and confined to her cell in consequence the following day. It is possible that someone was guilty of this. The severity which some of the wardresses used at chapel seated above the prisoners, one at every two or three rows, their backs to the altar and their attention completely taken up with the prisoners, gave one a strange sensation in church; it took away all reverence of the usual kind, and made one nervous and possibly inclined to laugh. But, as it happened, the girl punished for this offence was far removed from the possibility of laughing. She was one of those I had noticed with particularly long hair; it must have reached below her knees. We had come away together once from an Albert Hall meeting in a four-wheel cab when I had been lucky in securing it, and a wet evening made me invite strangers who were anxious to get away. She was particularly deferential and modest in her ways, her manner in chapel was irreproachable, and that she was picked out for punishment was most singularly ill-judged. We volunteered punishment of the same order as hers, and neither chapel, exercise, nor concerted labour had the benefit of us during the day.