"Like what?"
"Like eatin' with a fork, an' washin' every day, an' doin' yer hair over whether it needs it or not?"
"If I had hair as grand as yours, they wouldn't have to make me fix it," said the close-cropped little girl enviously.
Nance looked at her suspiciously. Once before she had been lured by that bait, and she was wary. But the envy in the eyes of the short-haired girl was genuine.
Nance took the first opportunity that presented itself to look in a mirror. To her amazement, her tight, drab-colored braids had become gleaming bands of gold, and there were fluffy little tendrils across her forehead and at the back of her neck. It was unbelievable, too, how much more becoming one nose was to the human countenance than two.
A few days later when one of the older girls said teasingly, "Nance Molloy is stuck on her hair!" Nance answered proudly, "Well, ain't I got a right to be?"
At the end of the first month word came from Mrs. Purdy that she had succeeded in obtaining Dan's release, and that he was back at work at Clarke's, and on probation again. This news, instead of making Nance restless for her own freedom, had quite the opposite effect. Now that her worry over Dan was at an end, she resigned herself cheerfully to the business of being reformed.
The presiding genius of Forest Home was Miss Stanley, the superintendent. She did not believe in high fences or uniforms or bodily punishment. She was tall, handsome, and serene, and she treated the girls with the same grave courtesy with which she treated the directors.
Nance regarded her with something of the worshipful awe she had once felt before an image of the Virgin Mary.
"She don't make you 'fraid exactly," she confided to Birdie. "She makes you 'shamed."