Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.
By the Same Author
THE AVENGING PARROT
THE BLACK PIGEON
MURDER BACKSTAIRS
THE PENNY PRINCESS
SAINT AND SINNER
DAUGHTERS OF MIDAS
RIVAL WIVES
GIRL ALONE
By ANNE AUSTIN
THE WHITE HOUSE, PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO
Copyright, 1930, by ANNE AUSTIN
PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES
BY THE WHITE BOOK HOUSE, CHICAGO
CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER I
The long, bare room had never been graced by a picture or a curtain. Its
only furniture was twenty narrow iron cots. Four girls were scrubbing
the warped, wide-planked floor, three of them pitifully young for the
hard work, the baby of them being only six, the oldest nine. The fourth,
who directed their labors, rising from her knees sometimes to help one
of her small crew, was just turned sixteen, but she looked in her short,
skimpy dress of faded blue and white checked gingham, not more than
twelve or thirteen.
"Sal-lee," the six-year-old called out in a coaxing whine, as she
sloshed a dirty rag up and down in a pail of soapy water, "play-act for
us, won't you, Sal-lee? 'Tend like you're a queen and I'm your little
girl. I'd be a princess, wouldn't I, Sal-lee?"
The child sat back on her thin little haunches, one small hand plucking
at the skimpy skirt of her own faded blue and white gingham, an exact
replica, except for size, of the frocks worn by the three other
scrubbers. "I'll 'tend like I've got on a white satin dress, Sal-lee--"
Sally Ford lifted a strand of fine black hair that had escaped from the
tight, thick braid that hung down her narrow back, tucked it behind a
well-shaped ear, and smiled fondly upon the tiny pleader. It was a
miracle-working smile. Before the miracle, that small, pale face had
looked like that of a serious little old woman, the brows knotted, the
mouth tight in a frown of concentration.
But when she smiled she became a pretty girl. Her blue eyes, that had
looked almost as faded as her dress, darkened and gleamed like a pair of
perfectly matched sapphires. Delicate, wing-like eyebrows, even blacker
than her hair, lost their sullenness, assumed a lovely, provocative
arch. Her white cheeks gleamed. Her little pale mouth, unpuckered of its
frown, bloomed suddenly, like a tea rose opening. Even, pointed, narrow
teeth, to fit the narrowness of her delicate, childish jaw, flashed into
that smile, completely destroying the picture of a rather sad little old
woman which she might have posed for before.
"All right, Betsy!" Sally cried, jumping to her feet. "But all of you
will have to work twice as hard after I've play-acted for you, or
Stone-Face will skin us alive."
Her smile was reflected in the three oldish little faces of the children
squatting on the floor. The rags with which they had been wiping up
surplus water after Sally's vigorous scrubbing were abandoned, and the
three of them, moving in unison like mindless sheep, clustered close to
Sally, following her with adoring eyes as she switched a sheet off one
of the cots.
"This is my ermine robe," she declared. "Thelma, run and shut the
door.... Now, this is my royal crown," she added, seizing her long,
thick braid of black hair. Her nimble, thin fingers searched for and
found three crimped wire hairpins which she secreted in the meshes of
the plait. In a trice her small head was crowned with its own
magnificent glory, the braid wound coronet-fashion over her ears and low
upon her broad, white forehead.
"Say, 'A royal queen am I,'" six-year-old Betsy shrilled, clasping her
hands in ecstasy. "And don't forget to make up a verse about me,
Sal-lee! I'm a princess! I've got on white satin and little red shoes,
ain't I, Sal-lee?"
Sally was marching grandly up and down the barrack-like dormitory,
holding Betsy's hand, the train of her "ermine robe" upheld by the two
other little girls in faded gingham, and her dramatically deepened voice
was chanting "verses" which she had composed on other such occasions and
to which she was now adding, when the door was thrown open and a booming
voice rang out:
"Sally Ford! What in the world does this mean? On a _Saturday_ morning!"
The two little "pages" dropped the "ermine robe"; the little "princess"
shrank closer against the "queen," and all four, Sally's voice leading
the chorus, chanted in a monotonous sing-song: "Good morning, Mrs.
Stone. We hope you are well." It was the good morning salutation which,
at the matron's orders, invariably greeted her as she made her morning
rounds of the state orphanage.
"Good morning, children," Mrs. Stone, the head matron of the asylum
answered severely but automatically. She never spoke except severely,
unless it happened that a trustee or a visitor was accompanying her.
"As a punishment for playing at your work you will spend an hour of your
Saturday afternoon playtime in the weaving room. And Betsy, if I find
your weaving all snarled up like it was last Saturday I'll lock you in
the dark room without any supper. You're a great big girl, nearly six
and a half years old, and you have to learn to work to earn your board
and keep. As for you, Sally--well I'm surprised at you! I thought I
could depend on you better than this. Sixteen years old and still acting
like a child and getting the younger children into trouble. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself, Sally Ford?"
"Yes, Mrs. Stone," Sally answered meekly, her face that of a little old
woman again; but her hands trembled as she gathered up the sheet which
for a magic ten minutes had been an ermine robe.
"Now, Sally," continued the matron, moving down the long line of iron
cots and inspecting them with a sharp eye, "don't let this happen again.
I depend on you big girls to help me discipline the little ones. And by
the way Sally, there's a new girl. She just came this morning, and I'm
having Miss Pond send her up to you. You have an empty bed in this
dormitory, I believe."
"Yes, Mrs. Stone," Sally nodded. "Christine's bed." There was nothing in
her voice to indicate that she had loved Christine more than any child
she had ever had charge of.
"I suppose this new child will be snapped up soon," Mrs. Stone
continued, her severe voice striving to be pleasant and conversational,
for she was fond of Sally, in her own way. "She has yellow curls, though
I suspect her mother, who has just died and who was a stock company
actress, used peroxide on it. But still it's yellow and it's curly, and
we have at least a hundred applications on file for little girls with
golden curly hair.
"Thelma," she whirled severely upon the eight-year-old child, "what's
this in your bed?" Her broad, heavy palm, sweeping expertly down the
sheet-covered iron cot, had encountered something, a piece of broken
blue bottle.
"It--it's mine," Thelma quivered, her tongue licking upward to catch the
first salty tear. "I traded my broken doll for it. I look through it and
it makes everything look pretty and blue," she explained desperately, in
the institutional whine. "Oh, please let me keep it, Mrs. Stone!"
But the matron had tossed the bit of blue glass through the nearest
window. "You'd cut yourself on it, Thelma," she justified herself in her
stern voice. "I'll see if I can find another doll for you in the next
box of presents that comes in. Now, don't cry like a baby. You're a
great big girl. It was just a piece of broken old bottle. Well, Sally,
you take charge of the new little girl. Make her feel at home. Give her
a bath with that insect soap, and make a bundle of her clothes and take
them down to Miss Pond."
She lifted her long, starched skirt as she stepped over one of the
scrubber's puddles of water, then moved majestically through the door.
Clara, the nine-year-old orphan, stuck out her tongue as the white skirt
swished through the door, then turned upon Sally, her little face sharp
and ugly with hatred.
"Mean old thing! Always buttin' in! Can't let us have no fun at all!
Some other kid'll find Thelma's sapphire and keep it offen her--"
"It isn't a sapphire," Sally said dully, her brush beginning to describe
new semi-circles on the pine floor. "It's like she said--just a piece of
broken old bottle. And she said she'd try to find you a doll, Thelma."
"You _said_ it was a sapphire, Sally. You said it was worth millions and
millions of dollars. It _was_ a sapphire, long as you said it was,
Sally!" Thelma sobbed, as grieved for the loss of illusion as for the
loss of her treasure.
"I reckon I'm plumb foolish to go on play-acting all the time," Sally
Ford said dully.
The three little girls and the 16-year-old "mother" of them scrubbed in
silence for several minutes, doggedly hurrying to make up for lost time.
Then Thelma, who could never nurse grief or anger, spoke cheerfully:
"Reckon the new kid's gettin' her phys'cal zamination. When _I_ come
into the 'sylum you had to nearly boil me alive. 'N Mrs. Stone cut off
all my hair clean to the skin. 'N 'en nobody wouldn't 'dopt me 'cause I
looked like sich a scarecrow. But I got lotsa hair now, ain't I,
Sal-lee?"
"Oh, somebody'll be adopting you first thing you know, and then I won't
have any Thelma," Sally smiled at her.
"Say, Sal-lee" Clara wheedled, "why didn't nobody ever 'dopt you? _I_
think you're awful pretty. Sometimes it makes me feel all funny and
cry-ey inside, you look so awful pretty. When you're play-actin'," she
amended honestly. Sally Ford moved the big brush with angry vigor, while
her pale face colored a dull red. "I ain't--I mean, I'm not pretty at
all, Clara. But thank you just the same. I used to want to be adopted,
but now I don't. I want to hurry up and get to be eighteen so's I can
leave the asylum and make my own living. I want--" but she stopped
herself in time. Not to these open-mouthed, wide-eared children could
she tell her dream of dreams.
"But why _wasn't_ you adopted, Sal-lee?" Betsy, the baby of the group,
insisted. "You been here forever and ever, ain't you?"
"Since I was four years old," Sally admitted from between lips held
tight to keep them from trembling. "When I was little as you, Betsy, one
of the big girls told me I was sickly and awf'ly tiny and scrawny when I
was brought in, so nobody wanted to adopt me. They don't like sickly
babies," she added bitterly. "They just want fat little babies with
curly hair. Seems to me like the Lord oughta made all orphans pretty,
with golden curly hair."
"I know why Sally wasn't 'dopted," Thelma clamored for attention. "I
heard Miss Pond say it was a sin and a shame the way old Stone-Face has
kept Sally here, year in and year out, jist 'cause she's so good to us
little kids. Miss Pond said Sally is better'n any trained nurse when us
kids get sick and that she does more work than any 'big girl' they ever
had here. That's why you ain't been 'dopted, Sally."
"I know it," Sally confessed in a low voice. "But I couldn't be mean to
the babies, just so they'd want to get rid of me and let somebody adopt
me. Besides," she added, "I'm scared of people--outside. I'm scared of
all grown-up people, especially of adopters," she blurted miserably. "I
can't sashay up and down before 'em and act cute and laugh and pretend
like I've got a sweet disposition and like I'm crazy about 'em. I don't
look pretty a bit when the adopters send for me. I can't play-act then."
"You're bashful, Sal-lee," Clara told her shrewdly. "I'm not
bashful--much, except when visitors come and we have to show off our
company manners. I hate visitors! They whisper about us, call us 'poor
little things,' and think they're better'n us."
The floor of the big room had been completely scrubbed, and was giving
out a moist odor of yellow soap when Miss Pond, who worked in the office
on the first floor of the big main building, arrived leading a reluctant
little girl by the hand.
To the four orphans in faded blue and white gingham the newcomer looked
unbelievably splendid, more like the "princess" that Betsy had been
impersonating than like a mortal child. Her golden hair hung in
precisely arranged curls to her shoulders. Her dress was of pink crepe
de chine, trimmed with many yards of cream-colored lace. There were pink
silk socks and little white kid slippers. And her pretty face, though it
was streaked with tears, had been artfully coated with white powder and
tinted, on cheeks and lips, with carmine rouge.
"This is Eloise Durant, girls," said Miss Pond, who was incurably
sentimental and kind to orphans. "She's feeling a little homesick now
and I know you will all try to make her happy. You'll take charge of
her, won't you, Sally dear?"
"Yes, Miss Pond," Sally answered automatically, but her arms were
already yearning to gather the little bundle of elegance and tears and
homesickness.
"And Sally," Miss Pond said nervously, lowering her voice in the false
hope that the weeping child might not hear her, "Mrs. Stone says her
hair must be washed and then braided, like the other children's. Eloise
tells us it isn't naturally curly, that her mother did it up on kid
curlers every night. Her aunt's been doing it for her since her
mother--died."
"I don't want to be an orphan," the newcomer protested passionately, a
white-slippered foot flying out suddenly and kicking Miss Pond on the
shin.
It was then that Sally took charge. She knelt, regardless of frantic,
kicking little feet, and put her arms about Eloise Durant. She began to
whisper to the terror-stricken child, and Miss Pond scurried away, her
kind eyes brimming with tears, her kind heart swelling with impractical
plans for finding luxurious homes and incredibly kind foster parents for
all the orphans in the asylum--but especially for those with golden
curly hair and blue eyes. For Miss Pond was a born "adopter," with all
the typical adopter's prejudices and preferences.
When scarcely two minutes after the noon dinner bell had clanged
deafeningly, hundreds of little girls and big girls in faded blue and
white gingham came tumbling from every direction, to halt and form a
decorous procession just outside the dining hall doors, Sally and her
new little charge were among them. But only the sharp eyes of the other
orphans could have detected that the child who clung forlornly to
Sally's hand was a newcomer. The golden curls had disappeared, and in
their place were two short yellow braids, the ends tied with bits of old
shoe-string. The small face, scrubbed clean of its powder and rouge, was
as pale as Sally's. And instead of lace-trimmed pink crepe de chine,
silk socks and white kid slippers, Eloise was clad, like every other
orphan, in a skimpy gingham frock, coarse black stockings and heavy
black shoes.
And when the marching procession of orphans had distributed itself
before long, backless benches, drawn up to long, narrow pine tables
covered with torn, much-scrubbed white oilcloth, Eloise, coached in that
ritual as well as in many others sacred in the institution, piped up
with all the others, her voice as monotonous as theirs:
"Our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this food and for all the other
blessings Thou giveth us."
Sally Ford, keeping a watchful, pitying eye on her new charge, who was
only nibbling at the unappetizing food, found herself looking upon the
familiar scene with the eyes of the frightened little new orphan. It was
a game that Sally Ford often played--imagining herself someone else,
seeing familiar things through eyes which had never beheld them before.
Because Eloise was a "new girl," Sally was permitted to keep her at her
side after the noon dinner. It was Sally who showed her all the
buildings of the big orphanage, pointed out the boys' dormitories,
separated from the girls' quarters by the big kitchen garden; showed her
the bare schoolrooms, in which Sally herself had just completed the
third year of high school. It was Sally who pridefully showed her the
meagerly equipped gymnasium, the gift of a miraculously philanthropic
session of the state legislature; it was Sally who conducted her through
the many rooms devoted to hand crafts suited to girls--showing off a bit
as she expertly manipulated a hand loom.
Eloise's hot little hand clung tightly to Sally's on the long trip of
inspection of her new "home." But her cry, hopeless and monotonous now,
even taking on a little of the institutional whine, was still the same
heartbroken protest she had uttered upon her arrival in the dormitory:
"I don't want to be an orphan! I don't want to be an orphan, Sal-lee!"
"It ain't--I mean, isn't--so bad," Sally comforted her. "Sometimes we
have lots of fun. And Christmas is awf'ly nice. Every girl gets an
orange and a little sack of candy and a present. And we have turkey for
dinner, and ice cream."
"My mama gave me candy every day," Eloise whimpered. "Her men friends
brung it to her--boxes and boxes of it, and flowers, too. God was mean
to let her die, and make an orphan outa me!"
And because Sally herself had frequently been guilty of the same sinful
thought, she hurried Eloise, without rebuking her, to the front lawn
which always made visitors exclaim, "Why, how pretty! And so homelike!
Aren't the poor things fortunate to have such a beautiful home?"
For the front lawn, upon which no orphan was allowed to set foot except
in company with a lawnmower or a clipping shears, _was_ beautiful. Now,
in early June, it lay in the sun like an immense carpet, studded with
round or star-shaped beds of bright flowers. From the front, the
building looked stately and grand, too, with its clean red bricks and
its big, fluted white pillars. They were the only two orphans in sight,
except a pair of overalled boys, their tow heads bare to the hot sun,
their lean arms, bare to the shoulders in their ragged shirts, pushing
steadily against whirring lawnmowers.
"Oh, nasturtiums!" Eloise crowed, the first happy sound she had made
since entering the orphanage.
She broke from Sally's grasp, sped down the cement walk, then plunged
into the lush greenness of that vast velvet carpet, entirely unconscious
that she was committing one of the major crimes of the institution.
Sally, after a stunned moment, sped after her, calling out breathlessly:
"Don't dast to touch the flowers, Eloise! We ain't allowed to touch the
flowers! They'd skin us alive!"
But Eloise had already broken the stem of a flaming orange and red
nasturtium and was cuddling it against her cheek.
"Put it back, honey," Sally begged, herself committing the unpardonable
sin of walking on the grass. "There isn't any place at all you could
hide it, and if you carried it in your hand you'd get a licking sure.
But don't you cry, Eloise. Sally'll tell you a fairy story in play hour
this afternoon."
The two, Sally's heart already swelling with the sweet pain of having
found a new child to mother, Eloise's tear-reddened eyes sparkling with
anticipation, were hurrying up the path that led around the main
building to the weaving rooms in which Sally was to work an extra hour
as punishment for her morning's "play-acting," when Clara Hodges came
shrieking from behind the building:
"Sal-lee! Sal-lee Ford! Mrs. Stone wants you. In the office!" she added,
her voice dropping slightly on a note of horror.
"What for?" Sally pretended grown up unconcern, but her face, which had
been pretty and glowing a moment before, was dull and institutional and
sullen again.
"They's a man--a farmer man--talking to Stone-Face," Clara whispered,
her eyes furtive and mean as they darted about to see if she were
overheard. "Oh, Sal-lee, don't let 'em 'dopt you! We wouldn't have
nobody to play-act for us and tell us stories! Please, Sal-lee! Make
faces at him when Stone-Face ain't lookin' so's he won't like you!"
"I'm too big to be adopted," Sally reassured her. "Nobody wants to adopt
a 16-year-old girl. Here, you take Eloise to the weaving room with you."
Her voice was that of a managing, efficient, albeit loving mother, but
when she turned toward the front steps of the main building her feet
began to drag heavily, weighted with a fear which was reflected in her
darkling blue eyes, and in the deepened pallor of her cheeks. But, oh,
maybe it wasn't that! Why did she always have to worry about that--now
that she was sixteen? Why couldn't she expect something perfectly
lovely--like--like a father coming to claim his long-lost daughter?
Maybe there'd be a mother, too--
The vision Sally Ford had conjured up fastened wings to her feet. She
was breathless, glowing, when she arrived at the closed door of the
dread "office."
When Sally Ford opened the door of the office of the orphan asylum,
radiance was wiped instantly from her delicate face, as if she had been
stricken with sudden illness. For her worst fear was realized--the fear
that had kept her awake many nights on her narrow cot, since her
sixteenth birthday had passed. She cowered against the door, clinging to
the knob as if she were trying to screw up her courage to flee from the
disaster which fate, in bringing about her sixteenth birthday, had
pitilessly planned for her, instead of the boon of long-lost relatives
for which she had never entirely ceased to hope.
"Sally!" Mrs. Stone, seated at the big roll-top desk, called sharply.
"Say 'How do you do?' to the gentleman.... The girls are taught the
finest of manners here, Mr. Carson, but they are always a little shy
with strangers."
"Howdy-do, Mr. Carson," Sally gasped in a whisper.
"I believe this is the girl you asked for, Mr. Carson," Mrs. Stone went
on briskly, in her pleasant "company voice," which every orphan could
imitate with bitter accuracy.
The man, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged farmer, nodded, struggled to speak,
then hastily bent over a brass cuspidor and spat. That necessary act
performed, he eyed Sally with a keen, speculative gaze. His lean face
was tanned to the color and texture of brown leather, against which a
coating of talcum powder, applied after a close shave of his black
beard, showed ludicrously.
"Yes, mum, that's the girl, all right. Seen her when I was here last
June. Wouldn't let me have her then, mum, you may recollect."
Mrs. Stone smiled graciously. "Yes, I remember, Mr. Carson, and I was
very sorry to disappoint you, but we have an unbreakable rule here not
to board out one of our dear little girls until she is sixteen years
old. Sally was sixteen last week, and now that school is out, I see no
reason why she shouldn't make her home with your family for the
summer--or longer if you like. The law doesn't compel us to send the
girls to school after they are sixteen, you know."
"Yes'm, I've looked into the law," the farmer admitted. Then he turned
his shrewd, screwed-up black eyes upon Sally again. "Strong, healthy
girl, I reckon? No sickness, no bad faults, willing to work for her
board and keep?"
He rose, lifting his great length in sections, and slouched over to the
girl who still cowered against the door. His big-knuckled brown hands
fastened on her forearms, and when she shrank from his touch he nodded
with satisfaction. "Good big muscles, even if she is a skinny little
runt. I always say these skinny, wiry little women can beat the fat ones
all hollow."
"Sally is strong and she's marvelous with children. We've never had a
better worker than Sally, and since she's been raised in the Home, she's
used to work, Mr. Carson, although no one could say we are not good to
our girls. I'm sure you'll find her a willing helper on the farm. Did
your wife come into town with you this afternoon?"
"Her? In berry-picking time?" Mr. Carson was plainly amazed. "No, mum, I
come in alone. My daughter's laid up today with a summer cold, or she'd
be in with me, nagging me for money for her finery. But you know how
girls are, mum. Now, seeing as how my wife's near crazy with work, what
with the field hands to feed and all, and my daughter laid up with a
cold, I'd like to take this girl here along with me. You know me, mum.
Reckon I don't have to wait to be investigated no more."
Mrs. Stone was already reaching for a pen. "Perfectly all right, Mr.
Carson. Though it does put me in rather a tight place. Sally has been
taking care of a dormitory of nineteen of the small girls, and it is
going to upset things a bit, for tonight anyway. But I understand how it
is with you. You're going to be in town attending to business for an
hour or so, I suppose, Mr. Carson? Sally will have to get her things
together. You could call for her about five, I suppose?"
"Yes, mum, five it is!" The farmer spat again, rubbed his hand on his
trousers, then offered it to Mrs. Stone. "And thank you, mum, I'll take
good care of the young-un. But I guess she thinks she's a young lady
now, eh, miss?" And he tweaked Sally's ear, his fingers feeling like
sand-paper against her delicate skin.
"Tell Mr. Carson, Sally, that you'll appreciate having a nice home for
the summer--a nice country home," Mrs. Stone prompted, her eye stern and
commanding.
And Sally, taught all her life to conceal her feelings from those in
authority and to obey implicitly, gulped against the lump in her throat
so that she could utter the lie in the language which Mrs. Stone had
chosen.
The matron closed the door upon herself and the farmer, leaving Sally a
quivering, sobbing little thing, huddled against the wall, her nails
digging into the flesh of her palms. If anyone had asked her: "Sally,
why is your heart broken? Why do you cry like that?" she could not have
answered intelligently. She would have groped for words to express that
quality within her that burned a steady flame all these years,
unquenchable, even under the soul-stifling, damp blanket of charity. She
knew dimly that it was pride--a fierce, arrogant pride, that told her
that Sally Ford, by birth, was entitled to the best that life had to
offer.
And now--her body quivered with an agony which had no name and which was
the more terrible for its namelessness--she was to be thrust out into
the world, or that part of the world represented by Clem Carson and his
family. To eat the bitter bread of charity, to slave for the food she
put into her stomach, which craved delicacies she had never tasted; to
be treated as a servant, to have the shame of being an orphan, a child
nobody wanted, continuously held up before her shrinking, hunted
eyes--that was the fate which being sixteen had brought upon Sally Ford.
Every June they came--farmers like Clem Carson, seeking "hired girls"
whom they would not have to pay. Carson himself had taken three girls
from the orphanage.
Rena Cooper, who had gone to the Carson farm when Sally was thirteen,
had come back to the Home in September, a broken, dispirited
thing--Rena, who had been so gay and bright and saucy. Annie Springer
had been his choice the next year, and Annie had never come back. The
story that drifted into the orphanage by some mysterious grapevine had
it that Annie had found a "fellow" on the farm, a hired man, with whom
she had wandered away without the formality of a marriage ceremony.
The third summer, when he could not have Sally, he had taken Ruby
Presser, pretty, sweet little Ruby, who had been in love with Eddie
Cobb, one of the orphaned boys, since she was thirteen or fourteen years
old. Eddie had run away from the Home, after promising Ruby to come back
for her and marry her when he was grown-up and making enough money for
two to live on.
Ruby had gotten into mysterious trouble on the Carson farm--the
"grapevine" never supplied concrete details--and Ruby had run away from
the farm, only to be caught by the police and sent to the reformatory,
the particular hell with which every orphan was threatened if she dared
disobey even a minor rule of the Home. Delicate, sweet little Ruby in
the reformatory--that evil place where "incorrigibles" poisoned the
minds of good girls like Ruby Presser, made criminals of them, too.
Sally, remembering, as she cowered against the door of the orphanage
office, was suddenly fiercely glad that Ruby had thrown herself from a
fifth-floor window of the reformatory. Ruby, dead, was safe now from
charity and evil and from queer, warped, ugly girls who whispered
terrible things as they huddled on the cots of their cells.
"Oh, Sally, dear, what is the matter?" A soft, sighing voice broke in on
Sally's grief and fear, a bony hand was laid comfortingly on Sally's
dark head.
"Mr. Carson, that farmer who takes a girl every summer, is going to take
me home with him tonight," Sally gulped.
"But that will be nice, Sally!" Miss Pond gushed. "You will have a real
home, with plenty to eat and maybe some nice little dresses to wear, and
make new friends--"
"Yes, Miss Pond," Sally nodded, held thrall by twelve years of enforced
acquiescence. "But, oh, Miss Pond, I'd been hoping it was--my father--or
my mother, or somebody I belong to--"
"Why, Sally, you haven't a father, dear, and your mother--But, mercy me,
I mustn't be running on like this," Miss Pond caught herself up hastily,
a fearful eye on the closed door.
"Miss Pond," Sally pleaded, "won't you please, please tell me something
about myself before I go away? I know you're not allowed to, but oh,
Miss Pond, please! It's so cruel not to know anything! Please, Miss
Pond! You've always been so sweet to me--"
The little touch of flattery did it, or maybe it was the pathos in those
wide, blue eyes.
"It's against the rules," Miss Pond wavered. "But--I know how you feel,
Sally dear. I was raised in the Home myself, not knowing--. I can't get
your card out of the files now; Mrs. Stone might come and catch me. But
I'll make some excuse to come up to the locker room when you're getting
your things together. Oh--" she broke off. "I was just telling Sally how
nice it will be for her to have a real home, Mrs. Stone."
Mrs. Stone closed the door firmly, her eyes stern upon Sally. "Of course
it will be nice. And Sally must be properly appreciative. I did not at
all like your manner to Mr. Carson, Sally. But run along now and pack.
You may take your Sunday dress and shoes, and one of your every-day
ginghams. Mr. Carson will provide your clothes. His daughter is about
your age, and he says her last year's dresses will be nicer than
anything you've ever had."
"Yes, Mrs. Stone," Sally ducked her head and sidled out of the door, but
before it closed she exchanged a fleet, meaningful look with Miss Pond.
"I'm going to _know_!" Sally whispered to herself, as she ran down the
long, narrow corridor. "I'm going to know! About my mother!" And color
swept over her face, performing the miracle that changed her from a
colorless little orphan into a near-beauty.
Because she was leaving the orphanage for a temporary new home on the
Carson farm, Sally was permitted to take her regular Saturday night bath
that afternoon. In spite of her terror of the future, the girl who had
never known any home but a state orphan asylum felt a thrill of
adventure as she splashed in a painted tin tub, gloriously alone,
unhurried by clamorous girls waiting just outside.
The cold water--there was no hot water for bathing from April first to
October first--made her skin glow and tingle. As she dried herself on a
ragged wisp of grayish-white Turkish toweling, Sally surveyed her slim,
white body with shy pride. Shorn of the orphanage uniform she might have
been any pretty young girl budding into womanhood, so slim and rounded
and pinky-white she was.
"I guess I'm kinda pretty," Sally whispered to herself, as she thrust
her face close to the small, wavery mirror that could not quite succeed
in destroying her virginal loveliness. "Sweet sixteen and--never been
kissed," she smiled to herself, then bent forward and gravely laid her
pink, deliciously curved lips against the mirrored ones.
Then, in a panic lest she be too late to see kind Miss Pond, she jerked
on the rest of her clothing.
"Dear Sally, how sweet you look!" Miss Pond clasped her hands in
admiration as Sally slipped, breathless, into the locker-room that
contained the clothes of all the girls of her dormitory.
"Did you bring the card that tells all about me--and my mother?" Sally
brushed the compliment aside and demanded in an eager whisper.
"No, dearie, I was afraid Mrs. Stone might want it to make an entry
about Mr. Carson's taking you for the summer, but I copied the data. You
go ahead with your packing while I tell you what I found out," Miss Pond
answered nervously, but her pale gray eyes were sparkling with pleasure
in her mild little escapade.
Sally unlocked her own particular locker with the key that always hung
on a string about her neck, but almost immediately she whirled upon Miss
Pond, her eyes imploring. "It won't take me a minute to pack, Miss Pond.
Please go right on and tell me!"
"Well, Sally, I'm afraid there isn't much to tell." Miss Pond smoothed a
folded bit of paper apologetically. "The record says you were brought
here May 9, 1912, just twelve years ago, by a woman who said you were
her daughter. She gave your birthday as June 2, 1908, and her name as
Mrs. Nora Ford, a widow, aged 28--"
"Oh, she's young!" Sally breathed ecstatically. Then her face clouded,
as her nimble brain did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. "But she'd be
forty now, wouldn't she? Forty seems awfully old--"
"Forty is comparatively young, Sally!" Miss Pond, who was looking
regretfully back upon forty herself, said rather tartly. "But let me
hurry on. She gave poverty and illness as her reasons for asking the
state to take care of you. She said your father was dead."
"Oh, poor mother!" A shadow flitted across Sally's delicate face; quick
tears for the dead father and the ill, poverty-stricken mother filmed
her blue eyes.
"The state accepted you provisionally, and shortly afterward sent an
investigator to check up on her story," Miss Pond went on. "The
investigator found that the woman, Mrs. Ford, had left the city--it was
Stanton, thirty miles from here--and that no one knew where she had
gone. From that day to this we have had no word from the woman who
brought you here. She was a mystery in Stanton, and has remained a
mystery until now. I'm sorry, Sally, that I can't tell you more."
"Oh!" Sally's sharp cry was charged with such pain and disappointment
that Miss Pond took one of the little clenched fists between her own
thin hands, not noticing that the slip of paper fluttered to the floor.
"She didn't write to know how I was, didn't care whether I lived or
died! I wish I hadn't asked! I thought maybe there was somebody, someone
who loved me--"
"Remember she was sick and poor, Sally. Maybe she went to a hospital
suddenly and--and died. But there was no report in any papers of the
state of her death," Miss Pond added conscientiously. "You mustn't
grieve, Sally. You're nearly grown up. You'll be leaving us when you're
eighteen, unless you want to stay on as an assistant matron or as a
teacher--"
"Oh, no, no!" Sally cried. "I--I'll pack now, Miss Pond. And thank you a
million times for telling me, even if it did hurt."
In her distress Miss Pond trotted out of the locker-room without a
thought for the bit of paper on which she had scribbled the memorandum
of Sally's pitifully meager life history. But Sally had not forgotten
it. She snatched it from the floor and pinned it to her "body waist," a
vague resolution forming in her troubled heart.
When five o'clock came Sally Ford was waiting in the office for Clem
Carson, her downcast eyes fixed steadily upon the small brown paper
parcel in her lap, color staining her neck and cheeks and brow, for Mrs.
Stone, stiffly, awkwardly but conscientiously, was doing her
institutional best to arm the state's charge for her first foray into
the outside world.
"And so, Sally, I want you to remember to--to keep your body pure and
your mind clean," Mrs. Stone summed up, her strong, heavy face almost as
red as Sally's own. "You're too young to go out with young men, but
you'll be meeting the hired hands on the farm. You--you mustn't let them
take liberties of any kind with you. We try to give you girls in the
Home a sound religious and moral training, and if--if you're led astray
it will be due to the evils in your own nature and not to lack of proper
Christian training. You understand me, Sally?" she added severely.
"Yes, Mrs. Stone," Sally answered in a smothered voice.
Sally's hunted eyes glanced wildly about for a chance of escape and
lighted upon the turning knob of the door. In a moment Clem Carson was
edging in, his face slightly flushed, a tell-tale odor of whisky and
cloves on his breath.
"Little lady all ready to go?" he inquired with a suspiciously jovial
laugh, which made Sally crouch lower in her chair. "Looking pretty as a
picture, too! With two pretty girls in my house this summer, reckon I'll
have to stand guard with a shotgun to keep the boys away."
Word had gone round that Sally Ford was leaving the Home for the summer,
and as Clem Carson and his new unpaid hired girl walked together down
the long cement walk to where his car was parked at the curb, nearly
three hundred little girls, packed like a herd of sheep in the
wire-fenced playground adjoining the front lawn, sang out goodbys and
good wishes.
"Goodby Sal-lee! Hope you have a good time!"
"Goodby, Sal-lee! Write me a letter, Sal-lee!" "Goodby, goodby!"
Sally, waving her Sunday handkerchief, craned her neck for a last sight
of those blue-and-white-ginghamed little girls, the only playmates and
friends she had in the world. There were tears in her eyes, and,
queerly, for she thought she hated the Home, a stab of homesickness
shooting through her heart. How safe they were, there in the playground
pen! How simple and sheltered life was in the Home, after all! Suddenly
she knew, somehow, that it was the last time she would ever see it, or
the children.
Without a thought for the iron-clad "Keep off the grass" rule, Sally
turned and ran, fleetly, her little figure as graceful as a fawn's, over
the thick velvet carpet of the lawn. When she reached the high fence
that separated her from the other orphans, she spread her arms, as if
she would take them all into her embrace.
"Don't forget me, kids!" she panted, her voice thick with tears. "I--I
want to tell you I love you all, and I'm sorry for every mean thing I
ever did to any of you, and I hope you all get adopted by rich papas and
mamas and have ice cream every day! Goodby, kids! Goodby!"
"Kiss me goodby, Sal-lee!" a little whining voice pleaded.
Sally stooped and pressed her lips, through the fence opening, against
the babyish mouth of little Eloise Durant, the newest and most forlorn
orphan of them all.
"Me, too, Sal-lee! Me, too! We won't have nobody to play-act for us
now!" Betsy wailed, pressing her tear-stained face against the wire.