"Don't interrupt me. I repeat, if you know anything of Stella's record, keep it to yourself. A girl turns over a new leaf when she enters here. Her past is behind her. And let me caution you personally not to speak of your life to any one but myself. Remember that. Make confidences to no one—not even the matrons—to no one except me."
Jean searched the enigmatic face hungrily. "I doubt if you'd care to listen," she stated simply; "or whether, if you did listen, you'd believe!"
Something in her tone penetrated Miss Blair's official crust. "My dear!" she protested.
The girl was silent a moment. Then, point-blank, "Do you think a mother can hate her child?" she asked.
The superintendent, by virtue of her office, felt constrained to take up the cudgels for humanity. "Of course not," she responded.
"My mother hates me sometimes."
"Nonsense!"
"At other times it's only dislike," Jean went on impassively. "It's always been so. Dad got over the fact that I was a girl. He said he would call me his boy, anyhow. That's where the 'Jack' came from. But mother—she was different. I dare say if I'd been all girl, like Amelia, she could have stood me. She was forever holding up Amelia as a pattern. Amelia would get a hundred per cent. in that quiz you put me through. Amelia can sew; Amelia can embroider; Amelia can make tea-biscuit and angel-cake."
"And what were you doing while your sister was improving her opportunities?"
"Improving mine," came back Jean, with conviction. "Why didn't you ask me if I could swim, and box, and shoot, and hold my own with a gamy pickerel or trout?"