“An’ please, ma’am,” a voice was asking hopefully, “I kin stay now, cain’t I?”
Mary Shane did not reply, for a moment. “I’m afraid not, child,” she said presently. Few who thought they knew her would have recognized the matron’s voice. “You—you’ve done nothing to be kept here for. You’ll have to go home.”
Then it was that Selina Jo’s heart broke. She flung herself upon the matron.
“Oh, God, ma’am,” she sobbed, “please don’t make me go back! I ain’t goin’ back! I don’t want to be one o’ them low-down Hudsills all o’ my endurin’ days. I want to be somebody, like other folks is. I don’t want to have a passel o’ dang li’l’ old gals lookin’ at me slanchwise when I go to meetin’. You don’t know what it is, ma’am, to have a hankerin’. I want to be changed! I want to be made diffe’ent! Ma’am, I just got to git re-formed!”
Mary Shane had opened her mouth to speak, to check this outburst; suddenly her iron jaws closed with a snap.
“Come with me, child,” she said. “We’ll see the superintendent.” A moment later she added: “Jim Wellborn generally runs this reformatory to suit himself, anyway!”
The matron was the one person connected with the institution who took whatever liberties she chose. When she wished to be particularly impressive, she addressed people by their full names.
“Jim Wellborn,” she said brusquely, as she and Selina Jo entered the superintendent’s office, “this girl wants to tell you something. You listen closely.”
Wellborn, big and broad-shouldered, had glanced up as they entered. His quizzical glance had rested first upon the girl; now he looked at Mary Shane.
“When you’ve heard her story,” the matron continued, “if you can’t find some way to keep her here so she can learn to live the life that Almighty God has shown her that she’s fitted for, why I’ll undertake the job of looking after her myself and the reformatory can get another matron.”