To impose upon an officer, ignorant of the ways of the place, was a favorite entertainment of some of the others.
They commenced to hand me along from one to another when I wished for things to use, or for information, giving me a long chase to find it; but a short time, only, was required to extinguish that entertainment. I refused to take orders or information from any one but the Deputy.
My inquiries of him, and statements of what I had been told, exposed them. They got reproof instead of entertainment, which, of course, created resentment that vented itself in a thousand of those little annoying inventions in which unamiable women are so ingenious.
The reprisals Mrs. Hardhack made did not always redound to my inconvenience alone,—my women came in for a share in the retaliation. A new Receiving Matron was told to take no trouble about the dresses of my women in the kitchen,—it was no matter how they looked. The shorter she kept them, the better the Master would like it. The less they had to wear the more money would be saved to the institution. In consequence, dresses sufficient to make them decent were withheld.
I made a statement of some of these things to the Deputy. He said,—
"The Matrons have been in the habit of settling those small matters among themselves."
"So we might if either of us had the authority to dictate. If Mrs. Hardhack has the authority to control, and gives the order that my women are to go dirty and ragged, as you see them, I appeal to you. Just look at them as you see them now. Those dresses are all they have, and I can get no better without an order from you."
He looked at them. The angry color flashed into his face, and his teeth were set together. In about two hours tidy dresses were sent in to my women.
I went on,—
"If she has no authority, but is meddling to make mischief, will you please see that she does it no longer. I know it is not the Deputy's business to be settling these little disagreements among the Matrons; but I have no one else to go to. We have no one to regulate these matters for us but you. You call them small matters; so they may be to one who looks on; but our life, every day, is made up of them. And if you take them home, and make them your own, you will not think them so very small. Neither you nor I would consider it a small matter to go dirty and ragged. Would you allow one of your male officers to keep the men who are under another officer dirty and ragged, out of sheer malice, or for any reason?"