Mary Shane knitted her brows thoughtfully: “Hudsill?”
“Yes’m. Them low-down, sneakin’, ornery Shoalwater River Hudsills, ma’am. Ever’body in the country knows ’bout ’em. They air the shif’lesses’ fambly that ever was borned. An’ what’s furdermore, I’m the hellraisin’es’ one o’ the intire gin’ration!”
“What are you trying to tell me, child?”
“Just how tarnation mean I am, ma’am.”
In her plans for forcibly entering the reformatory, Selina Jo had hit upon the idea of charging herself, when her presence should be discovered, with an assortment of crimes sufficient to insure her incarceration for an indefinite period. It seemed to her now that the moment for her confession had arrived.
“Last mont’, ma’am,” she continued earnestly. “I burned down three cow stalls. Right atter that I went inta my own blood uncle’s cornfiel’ an’ pulled up ever’ smidgin’s bit o’ his young corn—pulled it smack up by the roots, ma’am. Ner that ain’t all, not nigh all. I almost hate to tell you this’n, ma’am. But last week I stobbed a li’l nigger baby to death. Killed him dead. Dead as——”
“Hush, child, hush!” the matron ordered. “You did none of those things. Now then: Tell me—the truth!”
It came then—the truth—a story haltingly told of a child’s scarcely understood heartache for self-betterment. Selina Jo didn’t want to stay in the reformatory long, she said; only long enough to learn all there was in the books. Then she would be willing to leave. She would change her name and go away off somewhere. Maybe the folks there, not knowing that she was a Hudsill, would invite her to a Sunday dinner when she went to meeting.
People, some of them, rather, said of Mary Shane that her long association with the so-called criminally inclined young had rendered her immune to every human emotion. But as the recital progressed, the matron turned her back suddenly and strode over to a window.
Presently the story was finished.