New Britain Herald Newspaper, March 24, 1928, Page 12

CHAPTER I * The long, bare room had never been graced by a pic- ture or a curtain. Its only furniture was 20 narrow iron cots. Four girls were serubbing 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 erew, was just turned 16, but she looked, m her short, skimpy dress of faded blue and white checked gingham, not more than 12 or 13. “Sal-lee,” the six-vear-old called o ng whine, as she sloshed a dirty up and down of soapy water, y-act for us, won't vou, Sa 9 lend like vou're a queen and I'm your little girl. I'd be a princess, wouldn't 1, Sal-lee?” The child sat back on | small hand plucking blue and white ging L of the frocks worn by th tend like I've got on a v 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. 1t was a miracle- working smile. Befo e miracle, that small, pale face had looked like that of a scerious old woman, the brows knotted, the mouth tizht 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 sullenmess, assumed a lovely, pro- vocative 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 mile, comipletely destroying the picture of a rather sad little old woman which she might have posed for before. “All right, Betsy!™ Sally eried, 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 werc abandoned, and the three of them, moving in nnison like mindless sheep, clustered close to Sally, foliowing her with adoring cves as she witched a sheet off one of the cots. “This is my ermine robe,” she declared. “Thelma, run and shut the door. . . . Now, this my royal crown,” she added, seizing her long, thick braid of black hair. Her nimble, thin fingers searched for and found three erimped wire hairpins which she seereted in the meshes of the plait. In a trice her small head was crowned with its own magnificent glovy, the braid wound coronet-fash- ion ;mvr her cars and low upon her broad, white fore- read. “Say A roval queen am I six-year-old Betsy shrill- . clasping her hands in cestasy. “And don't forget to e up a verse about me, Sal-lee! I'm a princess! 've on white satin and little ved shoes, ain't I, Sal-lee?” ally was marching 1dly up and down the barrack- > dormitory, holding Betsy's hand, the train of her “er- ne vobe” upheld by the two other little girls in faded neham, and her diamatically deepened voice was chant- verses” which she had composed on other such occa- ions and to which she was now adding, when the door as 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 one. 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 asylum. Good morning, children,” Mrs, Stone, the head matron of the asylum answered severely but automatically. She never Ke except severely, unl 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 1 find vour weaving all snarled up like it was last Saturday Tl lock vou 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 vou, Sally— well I'm surprised at vou! I thought I could depend on vou better than this. Sixteen years old and still acting like a child and getting the vounger children into trouble. Aren't vou ashamed of vourself, Sally Ford?” i . Mrs. Stone,” Sally answered meekly, her face that of a iittle old woman again; but her hands trembled as she gathered up the sheet which for a magie 10 minutes had been an crmine robe, o Now; ally.” continued the matron, moving down the Jong line of iron cots and inspecting them with a sharp eye, “don’t let this happe in. I depend on you big wirls t _h»'l;_x e discipline the little ones, And by the way Sally, therc tle givl. She just came this morning, and I'n <« Pond send her up to you. You have an empty in this de I believe,” . Yes ) nodded. “Christine’s bed.” There voice to indicate that she had loved Cly any child she had ever had charge of o Mis little haunches, one skirt of her own faded exact replica, except for size, three other serubbers. “I'll te satin dress, Sal-lec cr thin at the skimpy tory apped up soon,” voice striving to be was fond of Sally, ils. though T suspect and who was a stoek ecom- . But still it's yelow and acta hundred applicants on file rolden curly hair” ol severely upon the eight-year-old bed ™ Her broad, heavy palm, ( cot-covered iron cot, had n blue bottle. 5 tongue licking “I traded my broken 5 everything look rately, in the in- titutional whine. “Oh, please let me keep it, Mrs. Stone!” But the on had tossed the bit of blue s5 through the nearest idow. “You'd eut vourself on it, Thelma she justified herself in her stern voice. “I'll see if 1 can find anothey doll next box of precents that i baby. You're a great big roken old bottle, Well, Sally, little girl. Make her feel at i that inseet soap, and make coand take them down to Miss Pond.” 1 | 1oas che ctepped over of t ( ) coof water, then moved majes- encountered It t's mine, upward to catch ti doll for it. 1 look ough it and it m pretty and blue, explained des) conies in. Now, do wirl, It wa you lake charg ome, Give fi undle of hey ¢ 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 begin- ning to describe new semi-circles on the pine floor. “It's like she said—just a piece of hroken 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 2o 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 a erief or anger, spoke cheerfully : ‘Reckon the new kid's gettin® her phys'eal zamination. When ] come into the 'sylum you 1 1o nearly boil me alive, 'N Mrs. Stone cut off all my hair clean to the skin. N ’en nobody wouldn't ‘dopt me ‘cause 1 looked like sich a scarecrow. But I got lotsa hair now, ain't 1, Sal-lee “Oh, somehody’Il be adopting vou first thing vou know, and then T won't have any Thelma,” Sally smiled at he “Say, Sal-lee,” Clara wheedled, “why didn’t nobody ever ‘dopt vou? I think you're awful pretiy. Sometimes it makes me feel all funny and cry-cy inside, you look so aw- ful pretty. When youre plog-nedn’,” she wicd hoi- estly. Sally Ford moved the bie brush with angi while her pale face colored a dull ved. =L ain't-——1 mean, I'm not pretty at all, Clara. But thank you just the same. 1 used to want to be adopted, hut now I don't want to hurry up and get to be 18 5o’ T can Joave vium and make my own living. I want—" but she stopped hevsell in time. Not to th open-mountived, wide-cared childien could she tell her dream of dicam “But why wasn't you adopted, Sal-loe ™ Betey, the bab, of the group, insisted. “You becn Lo i and ever, ain’t you?” “Since I was four years old,” Sully tween lips held tight to kecp them from tremblin 1 was as little as you, Betsy, one of the big givls told me 1 was sickly and awf-ly tiny and scrawny hen 1 was brought in, so nobody wanted to adopt me. They don't like sickly babies,” she added bitterly. “They just vant fat little babies with curly hair. Scems to me like the Lord oughta made all orphans pretty, with golden cuily haiv, vicor, admitted from b “When “1 know why Sally wasn't ‘depted ciamored for attention. “1 heard Miss in and a shame the way old Stone vear in and year out, jist ‘causc ¢ we Dittle Kids. Miss Pond said Sally is bettertn any od nuy kids get sick and that she does n ! wirl’ they ever had here. That heen SALLY ‘dopted, Sally.” “I know it,” Sally confessed in a low voice. “But 1 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 secared of people — outside. I'm scared of all crown-up, people, especially of adopters,” she blurted mis- erably. ‘I can't sashay up and down before ’em and act cute and laugh and pretend like I've got a sweet disposi- tion and like I'm crazy about ‘em. I don’t look pretty a bit when the adopteis send for me. I ean’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 biz room had been completely ¢crubbed, and was ing out a moist odor of yellow soap when Miss Pond, who worked in the office on the first floor of the bie 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 li mortal child. Iler golden hair hung in precisely anged curls 1o her shoulders. Her dress was of pink pe de chine, trimmed with many yards of eream-colored lace. There were pink silk socks and little white kid slip- D And her pretty face, though it was streaked with tears, had been artfully coated with white powder and od, on checks and lips, with carmine ronge. This is Bloise Durant, girs,” said Miss Pond, vho was meurably sentimental and kind to orphans. “She’s feeling A little homesick now and 1 know you will all try to make fier happy. You'll take charge of her, won't you, Sally s, Miss Pond,” Sally answered automatically, but her avnis were already vearning to gather the little bundle of smee and teers antl homesickness. ! “And Sally,” Miss Pond said nervously, lowering her voice in the false hope that the weeping child might not “Mys. Stone says her hair must be washed and tded, like the other children’ t isn't naturally cwly, that her mother did it up on kid ! ory night. Her aunt’s been doing it for her since d sionately, a white-slippered foot flying out suddenly and kicking Miss Pond c¢n the shin. then th: Ily took charge. She knelt, regard- antie, kicking little feet, and put her arms about Iloise Durant. She began to whisper to the terror-stricken child, and Miss Pond scurried away, her kind eyes brim- ming with tears, her kind heart swelling with impractical plans for finding luxurious homes and ineredibly kind all the orphans in the asylum—but cs those with golden eurly hair and blue ¢ s Pond wa “adopte with all the typi foster pavents for peciadly To For M a born adopter’s prejudices and preferences. : When scarcely two minutes after the noon dinner bell had clanged deafeningly, hundreds of little girls and big gitls in faded blue and white gingham came tumbling from every direction, to halt and form a decorous proces- sion just outside the dining hall doors, Sally and her new little charge were among them. But only the sharp eyes of he other orphans could have detected that the child wha clung forlornly to Sally’s hand was a newcomer. The gol- en curls had disappeared, and in their place were two hort yellow braids, the ends tied with bi@s of old shoe- string. The small face, serubbed clean of its po\\'dg‘r and 'ouge, was as pale as Sally’s. And instead of lape—tr}mmud pink crepe de chine, silk socks, and white kid slippers, Eloise was clad, like eve other orphan, in a skimpy frock of faded gingham, coarse black stockings and heavy black shoes. % And when the marching procession of orphans had dis- tributed itself before long, backless benches, drawn up to long, narrow pine tables covered with torn, much-serubbed vhite oilcloth, Eloise, coached in that ritual as \\'el{ as in many others sacred in the institution, piped up with all he others, her voice as monotonous as theirs: “Qur heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this food and for all the other blessings Thou giveth us.” Sally FFord, keeping a watehful, pitying eye on her new charge, who was only nibbling at the unappetizing food, found herself looking upon the familiar scene with the cyes of the frightened little new orphan. It was a game that Sally Ford often played—imagining herself someone se, 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 wha mowed her all the buildings of the big orphanage, pointed out the boys’ dormitories, separated from the wirls’ quarters by the big kitchen garden; showed her the bare schoolrooms, in which Sally herself had just com- pleted thesthird 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 she expertly manipulated a hand loom or ran a quick scam on a sewing machine. Elois hot little hand clung tightly to Sally’s on the long trip of inspection of her new “home.”” But her ery, hopeless and monotonous now, even taking on a little of the institutional whine, was still the same heartbroken rotest che had uttered upon her arrvival in the dormi- tory: “I don't want {0 be an orphan! I don’t want to ba 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 mamma gave me candy every day,” Eloise whime pered, “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 vis- itors exclaim, “Why, how pretty! And so homelike! Aren’'t he poor little things fortunate to have such a beautiful home?” For the front lawn, upon which no orphan was allowed o set foot except in company with a lawnmower or a clip- ing shears, was beautiful. Now, in early June, it lay in he sun like an immense carpet, studded with round or haped beds of bright flowers. From the front, the uilding looked stately and grand, too, with its clean red ricks and its big, fluted white pillars, They were the only {wo orphans in sight, except a pair of overalled boys, their tow heads bare to the hot sun, their lean arms, bare to the shoulde in their ragged shirts, pushing steadily against whirring lawnmowers. “Oh, nasturtiums!” Eloise crowed, the first happy sound 10 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 commit- ting one of the major crimes of the institution. Sally, after i1 stunned moment, sped after her, calling out breath- CSSIy ¢ “Don’t dast to touch the flowers, Eloise! We ain't al- lowed to touch the flowers! They'd skin you alive!” But Eloise had already broken the stem of a flaming orange and red nasturtium and was cuddling it against her cheek. X “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 vyour 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-le Sal-lee Ford! Mrs. Stone wants you. In the office!” she added, her voice dropping slightly on a note of horror. “What fo 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 eyves furtive and mean as they dart- ed about to see if she were overheard. “Oh, Sallee, don’t let ¢ m'dopt you! We wouldn’t have nobody to play-act for us and tell us stories! Please. -lee! Make faces at him" when Stone-Face ain't lookin’ so's he won't like vou!” “I'm too big to be adopted,” Sally rcassured her. “No- body 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 lov- ing 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 16? 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.” (TO BE CONTINUED) The event which changes the course of Sally Ford's life takes place in the next chapter.