Under Lock and Key; or, Marion Marlowe's Last Role — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

% 3 MY QUEEN. * for that is all ward three is, if I am any judge of locations!”’ She was standing upon a wooden bench as she spoke, peering through a closely- grated window, and, a moment later, she cried out sharply: “Miss Day, of number seven, is having trouble with one of the patients! had better go! Which shall it be, Edith?” Miss Taylor had already opened the outer door with a heavy key, and, in a second, she had darted out into an asphalt courtyard which contained no less than twenty extraor- dinary looking human beings. These crea- tures were women who were mentally un- balanced, and they ‘were the very worst specimens that the institution could muster. | In the midst of them was a frail attendant who was struggling with a creatffre nearly twice her size and who was in danger of be- ing seriously hurt before Miss Taylor could reach her. Miss Thompson watched the struggle without a ray of interest. She was accus- tomed to such sights, so they did not dis- turb her. When the refractory patient had been marched across the courtyard and re- turned to her ward for solitary confinement for a time, Miss Taylor came back, straight- ening out her badly rumpled apron. “They have a few fiends up on number seven, it seems,” she said, quietly. “I was beginning to think we had them all, but Lib Goode is a terror from Terror- ville, Mary.” “They say she was sane when she was brought here,’ remarked Miss Thompson, indifferently, as she got down off the bench. “T don’t know how true it is, but I would not dispute it. In my opinion, Dr. Lee is capable Of anything. He'd commit any old sin if he saw sufficient money in it!” “Qh, Mary, do be careful!’ warned Miss Taylor, again. “Suppose Mrs. Mason should hear you, or that old cat, the ma- tron! Really I don’t want the bother of breaking in a new roommate just now. I do wish, for my sake, you would be a little careful.” She laughed as she spoke, but her face was serious. It was not often she was suited One of us_ with a roommate, er she did like si Thompson. A key clicked in a lock’and the ward door was thrown open. “Where's the graduate from ward three?” | called out another attendant, ‘Mrs. said | was to come and get her!” Miss Thompson stepped to the outer door and opened it, and then scanned the occu- pans of the yard. “ ‘Come here, Mollie!’ she called, in a iis Mason ant tone; then, as a young girl rose slowly — from a bench and started toward her, she turned her head and gave vent to another outburst of Opirrion. 4 “She was as pretty as a picture when she came here, girls. She had had brain fever or something, and her friends put her gn _ here. Since she lost her reckoning completely, they have forgotten she is on earth, but they say Lee can render any kind of an old bill, and they'll pay it promptly. They don’t want Mollie to appear to them sudden for they are society people.” The young girl had entered the hall and stood gazing about stupidly. She was a mild- looking patient and entirely tractdble. : “T hate to part with her! She’s the only decent one we have!” said Miss Taylor, re- gretfully. “Still, I musn’t envy her her op- portunity to get upstairs once more. Once down in this dungeon usually means good- by to everything. No one ever gets back above ground. Mollie is the only excep- tion.” “Oh, they consider her dead safe!” said Miss Thompson, sarcastically. ‘She doesn’t know enough to wish to get out, and nobody wants her. They could exhibit her on the front porch with perfect safety.” “Tt is a great place, this Home Rest Sani- tarium,” remarked the third attendant, slow- ly. “Yet I understand, girls, that it has an excellent reputation! Oh, well, Dr. Lee has a smooth tongue, and he has no end of in- fluence. He’s a relative of the Governor or the President or somebody!” “His day will come, in spite of all that!” remarked Miss Thompson, dryly, just as the supper call sounded, “He'll meet his come- up-once some time, aS we used to say in comicbooks co