"Report on Mr. Jeliffe's case. Attendant, James Hurst; physician, Dr. Macdonald. Same as previous report."
Suddenly the small, narrow door on the left opened and the head female attendant, dressed in a gray uniform with white cap and apron, entered. She was a big, muscular-looking woman, the kind of person one might expect to find in her particular business, a woman who looked capable of meeting, single-handed, any emergency that might arise. Her face was hard and unsympathetic, yet it belied her real character, for, as asylum nurses go, she was kind to the patients under her care.
"Well, Mrs. Johnson, what is it?" exclaimed the superintendent testily, annoyed at the many interruptions.
"Miss Marsh wants to see you, sir."
"Not to-day, Mrs. Johnson. I have seventy reports to make out, and I'm only half through. What does she want to see me about? Same thing, I suppose."
"She insists that she is being unlawfully detained here, and she wants to go."
"Of course—of course," exclaimed the superintendent impatiently. "In the short time that she's been here her case has received more attention than any in my experience. What with doctors, and lawyers, and newspaper men, I'm hounded to death about her. Tell her that she can't be permitted to go without an order of release from a physician. The State demands that. You know it as well as I do and yet you waste my time every few hours. Tell her that her habeas corpus case comes up next Friday."
He returned to his papers with an impatient gesture, as if he dismissed the matter from his mind, but the attendant still remained. Hesitatingly she said:
"She's so unhappy! She cries so constantly that I—I wish you'd see her, Mr. Spencer—if only to satisfy her. What can I do?"
The superintendent looked up from his work and glared at his head nurse, as if amazed at her obstinacy. Coldly, deliberately, he said: