Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/144

 Joan Daisy could not see the structure of these walls which were, in reality, the ends of cells built in solid blocks on both sides. The cells joined one another without door or hinge of any sort; but the east end of each cell, in the block to the east, was a barred grating which communicated to a barred corridor within the eastern wall of the building; the west end of each of the cells to the west also was a grating; the backs of the two blocks of cells confronted each other and were the walls which Joan Daisy saw.

In the back of each cell was a small, steel, sliding door through which the occupants of the cells were turned into the bull-pen; then the doors behind them were closed to form the continuous blank, dark walls against which some of the prisoners leaned, standing, while they gossiped in whispers and guffawed. Some sat on the cement floor, backs to the steel walls, while they read papers under the yellow electric lights required in the middle of the pen; but most of the men crowded to the bars at the end where was daylight and where, beyond the bars and the double steel screen, might be friends to speak to them.

A lock clicked, steel clanged and Joan Daisy saw two figures shadow the visiting screen.

"Here I am, Jan," cried the miserable woman who had come for Cribben.

"Hello, Sadie," replied a low, inflectionless voice on the other side.

Through her holes in the screen, Joan Daisy spied flaxen hair and a patch of white skin; gray eyes, queerly separated by strips of white-painted steel, stared at her. "Hello, Ket," she whispered, trying desperately to make her voice cheerful.

He did not answer. At Joan Daisy's elbow, Cribben's Sadie chattered excitedly and she crept away along the