death swings
the door open and we go farther afield."

"To another institution with a little more garden space?" Fred
queried, pensively.

Monet shrugged. "Perhaps... Who knows?"

* * * * *

There followed another week of idleness, and one day, as Fred Starratt
was dawdling in the sun, Harrison came up to him and said:

"The head waiter in the dining room at Ward Six goes out to-morrow.
Would you like his job?"

"Like it?" Fred found himself echoing, incredulously. "Can I begin at
once ... now?"

Harrison chuckled with rare good nature. "Well, to-morrow, anyway.
Just report in the kitchen after breakfast."

He could hardly wait for the next morning to come. He bungled things
horribly at first. It looked easy enough from the side lines--bringing
in the plates of steaming food, doling out sugar for the tea, passing
the dishpan about at the end of the meal for the inmates to yield up
their knives and forks. But after the first day Fred was swept with a
healing humility. It was necessary for even the humblest occupation to
be lighted with flickerings of skill.

He liked setting the table best, especially in the morning after the
breakfast crowd had gone. Then the sun was not yet too hot for comfort
and the long dining room was bathed in a golden mist. In a corner near
one of the windows a canary hopped blithely about its bobbing cage and
released its soul in a flood of song. He would begin by laying the
plates first, inverted, in long, precise rows. Then carefully he would
group the knives and forks about them. Not only carefully, but slowly,
so that the task might not be accomplished too readily. And all the
time his thoughts would be flying back and forth ... back and forth,
like a weaver's shuttle. At first these thoughts would pound harshly;
but gradually, under the spell of his busy hands, he would find his
mental process growing less and less painful, until he would wake up
suddenly and find that he had been day dreaming, escaping for a time
into a heaven of forgetfulness.

Toward the end of the month a crew was picked among the inmates of
Ward 6 to man a construction camp a few miles to the north where the
state was building a dam. Clancy was among the number, and Fordham and
Wainright, junior. Monet was offered the choice of assisting Fred
Starratt in the dining room or going out with the kitchen staff to
camp. He chose the dining-room job.

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