He stood looking at me for some moments, swinging a bunch of keys on his finger, and then said, mournfully, “So, you’ve come, have you?” which made me think that he must have dreamed of my coming.
Then he took up a small lamp, and, after examining me from head to foot as if I were some strange animal, he gave vent to a dismal groan, and asked me if I was hungry.
Receiving a negative answer, he groaned again, and beckoned me to follow him.
He led the way along a damp and chilly stone corridor, lined with little iron doors, which I needed no one to tell me belonged to cells, and I followed him very readily. My previous notions of prison treatment included the immediate ironing of the culprit to the extent of several hundredweight, and, finding myself mistaken, my spirits rose accordingly.
He stopped before one of the little doors near the end of the corridor, and, opening it with a large key, ushered me into an apartment about eight feet square.
This was my cell. The walls and ceiling were whitewashed, and the only furniture was an iron bedstead, covered with two coarse, gray blankets.
Mr. Janks waved his keys around as if to welcome me to this abode, and then, instead of going out and leaving me to my reflections, he leaned up against the door and groaned once more.
“The wickedness of these boys!” he said, passing his hand through his hair, and apparently addressing the ceiling. “Why do they ever come here? Why did you come here?”
I hastened to explain that I did not come of my own accord, and so far from wishing to be in jail, if he would only have the kindness to open the door, I would promise him to make my exit, and never return.
“And so young!” continued Mr. Janks, without paying any attention to my remarks, and still apostrophizing the ceiling. “But it’s allus the way! The younger they are, the worse they are!”