Sally’s dream-filled eyes, barely discernible in the dark, turned toward him, and her voice, hushed but determined, spoke the words that had been throbbing in her brain for four days:
“I’m not going back to the Home—ever. I’m going to run away.”
“Good for you!” David applauded. Then, with sudden seriousness: “But what will you do? A girl alone, like you? And won’t they try to bring you back? Isn’t there a law that will let them hunt you like a criminal?”
“Oh, yes. The state’s my legal guardian until I’m eighteen, and I’m only sixteen. In some states it’s twenty-one,” Sally answered, fright creeping back into her voice. “But I’m going to do it anyway. I’d rather die than go back to the orphanage for two more years. You don’t know what it’s like,” she added with sudden vehemence, and a sob-catch in her throat.
“Tell me, Sally,” David urged gently.
And Sally told him—in short, gasping sentences, roughened sometimes by tears—of the life of orphaned girls.
“We have enough to eat to keep from starving and they give us four new dresses a year,” Sally went on recklessly, her long-dammed-up emotion released by his sympathy and understanding, though he said so little. “And they don’t actually beat us, unless we’ve done something pretty bad; but oh, it’s the knowing that we’re orphans and that the state takes care of us and that nobody cares whether we live or die that makes it so hard to bear! From the time we enter the orphanage we are made to feel that everyone else is better than we are, and it’s not right for children, who will be men and women some day, with their livings to make, to feel that way!”
“Yes, an inferiority complex is a pretty bad handicap,” David interrupted gently.
“I know about inferiority complexes,” Sally took him up eagerly. “I’ve read a lot and studied a lot. We have a branch of the public library in the orphanage, but we’re only allowed to take out one book a week. I’ll graduate from high school next June—if I go back! But I won’t go back!”
“But Sally, Sally, what could you do?” David persisted. “You haven’t any money—”