“I’m sorry to appear brutal,” Barr said stiffly. “But it is better for us to face the facts, for if our friends ever know them they will not mince words. If you should come into our home now, as you are, gossips would immediately set themselves to dig up the facts. Too many people already know that Sally Ford has been sought by the police as a—delinquent. My wife and I could not possibly hope to explain our extraordinary interest in a runaway orphan. Do you agree with me, Sally?” He tried to make his voice kind, but his eyes were as cold and hard as steel.
“Yes, sir,” Sally agreed in her meek, institutional voice. But she felt so sick with shame and anger that her only desire then was to run and run and run until she found a haven in David’s arms. At the thought, some of the spiritedness which her few weeks of independence had fostered in her asserted itself. “But, Mr. Barr, if I would disgrace my mother, why don’t you let me go? I can marry David and no one will ever know that I have a mother—”
“That is very sensible, Sally,” Courtney Barr nodded, a gleam of kindliness in his cold eyes, “and I have tried to make your mother believe that your happiness would be best assured by your sticking to your own class—”
“It isn’t her class, if you mean that she’s suited only to poverty and hard work!” Enid Barr interrupted passionately. “Look at her, Court! She’s a born lady! She’s fine and delicate clear through—”
“And so is David!” Sally cried indignantly. “He may be middle-class, but he’s the finest, most honorable man in the world!”
“We shall not quarrel about class,” Courtney Barr cut in with heavy dignity. “The important thing is that your mother is determined to have you, to fit you for the station to which she belongs. I believe she is making a mistake, both from your standpoint and from hers, but I am willing to agree to a sensible arrangement. Our plan now, Sally, is to put you into a conservative, rather obscure girls’ finishing school in the South. I have several relatives—‘poor relations,’ I suppose you would call them—in the South, and it is my suggestion that you enter school as my ward—mine, you understand, not your mother’s, so that any suspicion as to your real parentage will rest upon me, rather than upon her.” He arched his eyebrows at Sally, looking rather consciously noble, and she nodded miserably. “During the two years that you will be in school—”
“Two years!” Sally echoed blankly. Two years more of loneliness, of not belonging, of being an orphan!
“Two years will pass very quickly,” Courtney Barr assured her. “Enid, please control yourself! I am infinitely sorry to distress you in this manner, but it is the only sensible thing to do.”
“Yes, Court,” Enid choked and buried her exquisite face in her small, useless-looking white hands.
Sally put her arms about her mother, and leaned her glossy black head against the golden one. “I’ll try to be contented and happy, Mr. Barr. Of course I want to protect Mother—”