r
step—then she looked up, and her murmurs ceased. Her cheeks flamed red, and I
felt my own face burn. I had remembered what she said to me, about how all the
world might gaze at her, it was a part of her punishment.
I made to move away, but the school-mistress had also caught sight of me
and now rose and nodded. Did I wish to speak with the prisoner? They wouldn''t
be a moment. Dawes knew her lesson quite by heart.
''Go on,'' she said then, ''you are doing splendidly.''
I might have watched and listened as another woman made her halting recitation,
and then was praised for it, then left to silence; but I did not like to look at
Dawes do that. I said, ''Well, I shall call on you another day, since you are busy.''
And I nodded to the school-mistress, and had Mrs Jelf escort me to the cells of
the further ward; and I passed an hour visiting the women there.
But oh! that hour was a miserable one, and the women all seemed dreary to me.
The first I went to put her work aside and stood and curtseyed, and nodded and
cringed while Mrs Jelf refastened her gate; but as soon as we were alone she
drew me to her and said, in a reeking whisper: ''Come close, come closer! They
mustn''t hear me say it! If they hear me, they''ll nip me! Oh, they''ll nip me till I
scream!''
She meant rats. She said that rats come in the night; she