“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 I find your weaving all snarled up like it was last Saturday I’ll lock you 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 you, Sally—well I’m surprised at you! I thought I could depend on you better than this. Sixteen years old and still acting like a child and getting the younger children into trouble. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Sally Ford?”
“Yes, Mrs. Stone,” Sally answered meekly, her face that of a little old woman again; but her hands trembled as she gathered up the sheet which for a magic ten minutes had been an ermine robe.
“Now, Sally,” continued the matron, moving down the long line of iron cots and inspecting them with a sharp eye, “don’t let this happen again. I depend on you big girls to help me discipline the little ones. And by the way Sally, there’s a new girl. She just came this morning, and I’m having Miss Pond send her up to you. You have an empty bed in this dormitory, I believe.”
“Yes, Mrs. Stone,” Sally nodded. “Christine’s bed.” There was nothing in her voice to indicate that she had loved Christine more than any child she had ever had charge of.
“I suppose this new child will be snapped up soon,” Mrs. Stone continued, her severe voice striving to be pleasant and conversational, for she was fond of Sally, in her own way. “She has yellow curls, though I suspect her mother, who has just died and who was a stock company actress, used peroxide on it. But still it’s yellow and it’s curly, and we have at least a hundred applications on file for little girls with golden curly hair.
“Thelma,” she whirled severely upon the eight-year-old child, “what’s this in your bed?” Her broad, heavy palm, sweeping expertly down the sheet-covered iron cot, had encountered something, a piece of broken blue bottle.
“It—it’s mine,” Thelma quivered, her tongue licking upward to catch the first salty tear. “I traded my broken doll for it. I look through it and it makes everything look pretty and blue,” she explained desperately, in the institutional whine. “Oh, please let me keep it, Mrs. Stone!”
But the matron had tossed the bit of blue glass through the nearest window. “You’d cut yourself on it, Thelma,” she justified herself in her stern voice. “I’ll see if I can find another doll for you in the next box of presents that comes in. Now, don’t cry like a baby. You’re a great big girl. It was just a piece of broken old bottle. Well, Sally, you take charge of the new little girl. Make her feel at home. Give her a bath with that insect soap, and make a bundle of her clothes and take them down to Miss Pond.”
She lifted her long, starched skirt as she stepped over one of the scrubber’s puddles of water, then moved majestically through the door.
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.