LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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