"I'm sorry, Mother."
"Are you really? Truly contrite? Genuinely humble?"
"I—I suppose so."
"Oh, suppositions. Theories. Vapors. Hopes. Pooh. Gracious, can't you wind faster?"
"Something seems to be holding the wool back."
"Nonsense! Oh, see what you've done, you clumsy boy! You're unravelling my cushion."
"I'm sorry, Mother."
She hurled her knitting in his face. "Take him away," she screamed. "He's a monster—can't you see?"
The other inmates threw up their heads and howled in unison. One sufferer, naked to the waist, his distorted face set in a dreadful smile, his hands stiffened into claws, ran into the room and danced around the Governor. Two women, their streaming hair starched with dirt, shrieked, "He did it, he did it. He's the peeping tom." A man shambled in a circle, head down, muttering, "Womb, tomb, boom; boom, womb, tomb; tomb, boom, womb."