So then, I wrote out: Susan, Susan—I wrote it, fifty times. Nurse Bacon hit me. Nurse Spiller hit me, too. Dr Christie shook his head. He said my case was worse than he had thought, and needed another method. He gave me drinks of creosote—had the nurses hold me, while he poured it into my mouth. He talked of bringing a leech-man in, to bleed my head. Then a new lady came to the house, who would speak nothing but a made-up language she said
was the language of snakes; and after that he passed all his time with her, pricking her with needles, bursting paper bags behind her ear, scalding her with boiling water—looking for ways to startle her into speaking English.
I wished he would go on pricking and scalding her for ever. The creosote had almost choked me. I was frightened of leeches. And his leaving me alone, it seemed to me, would give me more time for sitting and planning my escape in. For I still thought of nothing but of that. It got to June. I had gone in there some time in May. But I still had spirit enough to learn the lie of the house, to study the windows and doors, looking out for weak ones; and every time Nurse Bacon took out her chain of keys, I watched, and saw which did what. I saw that, as far as the locks on the bedroom and passage doors went, one key worked them all. If I could slip that key from a nurse''s chain, I could make my escape, I was certain of it. But those chains were stout; and each nurse kept her keys very close; and Nurse Bacon—who was warned I might be crafty—kept hers closest of all. She gave them up only to Betty when she wanted something got out from her cupboard; and then she took them back at once, and dropped them into her pocket.