“Ye-e-es ... that’s about it, I guess.”
“Do they learn ’em outen books in there?”
“Oh, yes; they have regular hours for study.”
“An’ could—could a gal git in there what didn’t know nothin’ but a part o’ the fu’st reader?”
“You don’t understand, yet, child. It’s only for girls who do wrong. Now, a girl like you never would go there.”
Selina Jo sighed dejectedly. Her eyes caressed the buildings with their spotless white walls and wide-flung shutters, and the groups of girls scattered about the lawn.
Presently she pointed to a high iron picket fence which enclosed the lot. “What’s the fence fer?” she asked.
“Why, if that fence wasn’t there, little sister, half the girls there would light out before midnight,” the sheriff answered.
“They’d run away?” Selina Jo shook her head incredulously. “F’um them purty houses?”
Since it would be impossible for her to reach home that day, she spent another night with the sheriff’s family. In her dreams she saw white-painted buildings fashioned of real lumber. There was real glass in the windows, too; they weren’t just yawning black holes in the walls. And the chimneys were of brick; so different from the flimsy stick-and-clay affair that leaned drunkenly against one end of the cabin at home. Home! She seemed to sicken at the thought.