"The Deputy wouldn't be hard on us, if he could help it."
I did the best I could. I told them I was sorry to make them work so
hard; but I could not help it. I asked them to do things, when I could
possibly do it, rather than give a command.
When I had time I gave them a reason, for an order, and however tired
they might be, that was sure to secure ready and prompt acquiescence.
"You must get on more steam as quick as you can, because we are a little
behind time with our dinner," was sure to set Allen's fire going at
once.
If I came in, and found them sitting down, idly gossiping away the time
before their work was done, I had only to say,--
"Now, girls, start round, and get your work done; then, you can sit down
and talk. A clean room is so much pleasanter than a dirty one to me, and
I want my place to look the nicest of any one in the institution, and
you wish me to have the credit of its being so. You like to have all of
the visitors taken in to see the kitchen because it looks so nice."
They would put the work about very quickly. Scrub and dust, and make the
old kitchen shine like a new one in a twinkling.
They were keen enough to fathom character, and took no advantage of my
manner. They were conciliated; but did not lose the restraint of
authority. They knew it was there, and could be used if necessary.
They never gave me impertinence; nor refused to obey when an order came
directly from me.
That inspection day was a literal washing of the great Master's feet;
not with my tears of penitence, but with the bitter remnants of pride
and anger subdued to patience? My work was even more humiliating. It was
that of the dogs, at the temple gate, cleansing the sores of the vagrant
Lazarus.
The prisoners were allowed the condiments of salt, pepper, and vinegar.
Their boxes and bottles were filled every Thursday. That was to last
till the next Thursday. If they were wasted, or extravagantly used, they
were obliged to go without till the replenishing day came. To attend to
that was one of the duties of the chambermaids.
I was obliged to look after it or they would scatter and waste their
allowance, and then play off on me. They would call to me,--
"I want salt; there was none put in my box."
That would be done from pure mischief, to get the sweeps a scolding.
But I gave them little chance to carry out their mischief in that way. I
had the answer ready,--
"It was put there. I have been in every room to-day and saw it there. If
it is gone you have wasted it, and must go without."
"I haven't wasted it."
"Wasn't it your pepper and salt that was strewed on the shop-floor
to-day?"
That hint that I was after them, and knew what they were about, was
sufficient. There were no more complaints made.
Every woman was obliged to make, and tie up, her own bed. The prison
women swept the rooms every morning. That gave them an opportunity to
secrete many a nice bit for their friends. Indeed my sweeps ran a
regular underground bakery express from the Masters kitchen, and also
from the prisoners'.
Many a nice biscuit and slice of cake went from the range to the cells,
and bread from my table was provided against mush morning, and
brown-bread breakfasts.
Onions were a favorite vegetable, but their telltale odor enabled me to
detect them easily.
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.