A wardress told me I might come out. I picked up my shoes and went with them in my hand to an “officer” who seemed to be the most authoritative person present. I said to her, “I find these shoes are rather small for me. Could you kindly let me have a bigger pair?” She seemed not to have heard what I said, did not look my way, but shouted past me into the air, speaking in a loud voice, very rapidly, and without any variety of intonation in a way that sounded strange and unnatural, as if she were proclaiming an edict written by another person: “It’s -- no -- good -- complaining -- about -- those; they’re -- the -- largest -- size -- in -- stock; you -- can’t -- have -- any -- others -- so -- you’d -- better -- make -- the -- best -- of -- them.” As soon as I realised that she was answering me I felt very curious and interested. “So that is what it means,” I thought, “being in prison.” It required no flight of the imagination, no tags of theory, to understand what the effect of this manner would be on an ordinary prisoner.
Mrs. Lawrence and I waited together in the passage. Presently a wardress came up to us with a paper in her hand and began reading out the prison rules, which we were told had to be strictly observed under pain of punishment. There were a great many dealing with a variety of subjects. She read very fast like a wooden automaton, as if she herself were weary of this too frequent job. Although I had heard of many of the rules before from previous prisoners, I could with difficulty catch the drift, and it struck me how little the ordinary prisoner would be able to glean from this hurried reading of rules absolutely new to her, framed in official language often far beyond her comprehension.
We were then led off through various corridors, taken out of doors and into another building, weighed a second time, and taken up a staircase. At the top we were told to remove our shoes and carry them in our hands. In the passage there were cells with locked gates that looked very grim, and locked doors behind them. One door opposite the stairs was open and the gate only closed. This was unlocked for us and we were ushered into a large high room. A fire burned brightly at one end and beds were ranged on either side of the walls. It was evidently a hospital ward. We were shown to the beds nearest the fire-place, on either side of it, and told they would be ours. Mrs. Lawrence came over to me and whispered, “They have put us in hospital.” The one thing on which my hopes had centred throughout that seemingly eternal day was the prospect of being completely alone at the end of it. Now that was not to be. For the first time I was taken unawares, had made no preparation for the contingency; I felt quite unnerved and could have sobbed like a child. The fact that I was to remain with Mrs. Lawrence was my only consolation.