This was pleasantly like magic.
They entered a large chamber carpeted and walled in the garish flowers which many boards of directors suppose will joy the cheerless breast.

There were present a dozen women inmates,--sullen, weary-looking beings who seemed to have made abject resignation their latest vice.

They turned their lustreless eyes upon the visitors, and a portly woman in a red waist with a little American flag in a buttonhole issued to them a nasal command to rise.

They got to their feet with a starched noise, like dead leaves blowing, and St.George eagerly scanned their faces.

There were women of several nationalities, though they all looked raceless in the ugly uniforms which those same boards of directors consider _de rigueur_ for the soul that is to be won back to the normal.