“Them Perkinses?” exclaimed Sadie, fearfully. “I won’t never go back to them—not while I’m alive I won’t! I don’t care! I jest won’t!”
She spoke wildly. She turned to run from the room and would have done so, had not Ruth been there to stop her and hold her in her arms.
CHAPTER XVII—THE BLACK DOUGLASS
“Oh, don’t frighten her, Mr. Steele!” begged Ruth, still holding the half wild girl. “You would not send her back to those awful people?”
“Tut, tut! I am no ogre, I hope,” exclaimed the gentleman, rather put out of countenance at this outburst. “I only mean the child well. Doesn’t she understand?”
“I won’t go back to them Perkinses, I tell you!” cried Sadie, with a stamp of her foot.
“It is not my intention to send you back. I mean to look up your record and the record of the people you were placed with—Perkins, is it? The authorities of the institution that had the care of you, should be made to be more careful in their selection of homes for their charges.
“No. I will keep you here till I have had the matter sifted. If those—those Perkinses, as you call them, are unfit to care for you, you shall certainly not go back to them, my girl.”
Sadie looked at him shrewdly. “But I don’t want to stay here, Mister,” she blurted out.
“My girl, you are not of an age when you should be allowed to choose for yourself. Others, older and wiser, must choose for you. I would not feel that I was doing right in allowing you to run wild again——”