It was agreed that I should go back to bed for the benefit of my heart condition. After the prolonged strain I was only too glad to do this. The morning, however, was taken up with many visits of inspection. The Governor made his rounds in a formal way and never relaxed his official muscles, but he seemed kindly, nevertheless, and I felt sorry for him having to play what I supposed was a disagreeable game for him. The matron wore a quite different expression from when I had seen her the evening before. She looked very tired, and I wondered whether any part of her work gave her satisfaction. The Chaplain, too, looked ill and I thought what a harrowing life his must be, always pouring out sympathy for sorrows and sufferings that he had no power to relieve. He came up to my bed with a smile and said, in a voice well-flavoured with contempt: “Well, you must have done something very wicked to find yourself in here?” I was surprised, supposed he meant it for a joke; supposed, too, that possibly from his point of view it was an entirely comic thing that we should be in prison. But it seemed odd that his imagination and sympathy should not at least have led him to inquire first what was our point of view in the matter, and he seemed not to consider it possible that our actions should have entailed self-sacrifice and the pain of bringing anxiety to those we loved. I answered: “If I had thought what I did very wicked, I should not have done it.”
At ten o’clock hot milk was again brought into the ward for those who wished for it, also fruit, but, to my great relief, this was optional. The morning was taken up with cleaning the ward. The 3rd Division prisoner by a series of processes and with the aid of a long-handled polisher, first swept, then beeswaxed, then polished the wooden floor. She did it with the skill of an expert and her graceful gestures were a pleasure to watch. She never paused for a moment in her work except when the entry of some official necessitated a temporary suspension.
Then followed a polishing of metal fixtures and dusting of the walls, shelves, books, etc. To my great joy, the patients not in bed were ordered to take part in the dusting. It was a means of practising my favourite hobby of cleaning, also of keeping warm, of helping the little 3rd Division prisoner, and occasionally exchanging a whispered word with her, though this was rarely achieved. The dust was continuously stirred throughout the morning, moved from the floor, then from the wall. The grey fluff that came from the bedding and floated about the floor gathered a certain amount of dust as it was swept up and eventually burnt in the fire, but no damping or reasonable process to get rid of the dust was used, so that shelves, books, beds, were no sooner dusted than they were again covered as before. On one or two occasions I ventured to damp my duster, but this, of course, made it very dirty, which result met with disfavour. It was no doubt felt that as the more vigorous patients had nothing much better to do, they might as well go on dusting throughout the morning. In an ordinary home the daily processes of sweeping and dusting always seem to me absurdly laborious, elaborate and inadequate; the workers at these household crafts having had so little share in the application of modern invention to their toil, and little appeal on behalf of public service and utility has been made to women of higher education and greater leisure than the workers themselves. The housecraft of prison, as one watched it day by day, pressed one’s thoughts on to the subject. The collecting of dust by means of damp cloths immediately followed by a dry rubber would certainly be more effective.