"You may talk now, girls," she announced. "Quietly, remember."
A score of tongues were instantly loosed. The newcomer was astounded. How had they the heart to speak? It was strange table-talk, curiously limited in range, straying little beyond the narrow confines of the reformatory world. A girl opposite said: "One year and five months more!" and set afoot a spirited comparison which crisscrossed the board from end to end and reached its climax in the enviable lot of her whose release was due in thirty-seven days. Jean observed that the head of the first speaker was lop-sided; its neighbor was narrow in the forehead; a third, two places beyond, had peculiar teeth. Nearly all, in fact, were stamped with some queerness, either natural or artificially imposed by an institutional régime wherein the graces of the toilet had no function.
The gossip took another tack, originating this time in some trivial happening in the gymnasium. Jean listened closely at a mention of basket-ball, but lost all interest when the talk veered fitfully to the sewing-school.
"Ain't you hungry?" said a voice at her side.
Jean rounded upon a girl perhaps a year her senior. Her tones were gentle, with a certain lisping appeal, and her face, if not strong, was neither abnormal nor coarse. Outside a refuge uniform she would readily pass as pretty.
"I couldn't stomach it myself, at the start," she went on, without waiting for an answer, "but I got used to it. We all do. Why, the days I work in the laundry I'm half starved."
Jean stared.
"They make you do laundry work!"
"Sure. We all take a turn. Everything on the place is done by the girls, you know—washing, cooking, tailoring, gardening, and a lot besides."
Her auditor relapsed into gloomy silence, a new horror added to her plight. At home, even the factotum they styled the hired girl had been exempt from washing. A strapping negress had come in Mondays for that.