ning of the second week of Fred Starratt's
stay at Fairview, as he and Monet were swinging back to lunch after a
brisk walk, they received orders to fall in line with the inmates of
Ward 6.

"Things will be better now," Monet said, with his usual air of quiet
reassurance.

And so it proved.

Fred's first introduction was to the dining room. It was not an
extraordinary place, and yet Fred gave a little gasp as he entered it
and stood staring almost foolishly at the tables set with clean linen.
Three of its sides were made up almost entirely of windows, before
which the shades were drawn to shut out the hot noonday sun, and its
floor of polished hardwood glistened even in the subdued light. They
sat down in the first seats that came to hand, and it was not until
some cold meat was passed that Fred discovered a knife and fork at his
place. The meat was neither choice nor dainty, but somehow just the
fact of this knife and fork gave it extraordinary zest. Later on,
small pats of butter were circulated and a spoonful of sugar apiece
for the tea. And once again he listened to people talk while they ate
... heard a subdued, but sane, laugh or two... There was a smoking
room also, not overlarge, but adequate.

The inmates of Ward 6, from whom Fred had stood aloof, welcomed him
warmly. He was at a loss to know why until Monet explained.

"It's the cigarettes."

"Ah, then you distributed them here? I thought they went to the other
poor devils."

The youth turned a wistful glance toward him. "I knew you'd get over
to this place finally ... and I wanted them to like you..."

Fred fell silent over the implied rebuke.

The dormitories were large and light and airy and scrupulously clean,
but the usual institutional chill pervaded everything... Yet, for a
season, Fred Starratt found all discrimination smothered in his
reaction to normal sights and sounds. But, after a day or two, the
same human adaptability that had made him accept the life in Ward 1 as
a matter of course rose to the new environment and occasion. Presently
his critical faculty flooded back again--almost for the first time
since his arrest. And he knew instinctively that he was standing again
on surer ground. He began to wonder, for instance, just what the
commonwealth was doing for these human derelicts which it shed such
facile tears over... He knew, of course, what it had done in his case.
It had given him three indifferent meals, vaccinated him, put him