Girl Alone.

by Anne Austin.

CHAPTER I

The long, bare room had never been graced by a picture or a curtain. Its only furniture was twenty narrow iron cots. Four girls were scrubbing the warped, wide-planked floor, three of them pitifully young for the hard work, the baby of them being only six, the oldest nine. The fourth, who directed their labors, rising from her knees sometimes to help one of her small crew, was just turned sixteen, but she looked in her short, skimpy dress of faded blue and white checked gingham, not more than twelve or thirteen.

"Sal-lee," the six-year-old called out in a coaxing whine, as she sloshed a dirty rag up and down in a pail of soapy water, "play-act for us, won't you, Sal-lee? 'Tend like you're a queen and I'm your little girl. I'd be a princess, wouldn't I, Sal-lee?"

The child sat back on her thin little haunches, one small hand plucking at the skimpy skirt of her own faded blue and white gingham, an exact replica, except for size, of the frocks worn by the three other scrubbers. "I'll 'tend like I've got on a white satin dress, Sal-lee-"

Sally Ford lifted a strand of fine black hair that had escaped from the tight, thick braid that hung down her narrow back, tucked it behind a well-shaped ear, and smiled fondly upon the tiny pleader. It was a miracle-working smile. Before the miracle, that small, pale face had looked like that of a serious little old woman, the brows knotted, the mouth tight in a frown of concentration.

But when she smiled she became a pretty girl. Her blue eyes, that had looked almost as faded as her dress, darkened and gleamed like a pair of perfectly matched sapphires. Delicate, wing-like eyebrows, even blacker than her hair, lost their sullenness, a.s.sumed a lovely, provocative arch. Her white cheeks gleamed. Her little pale mouth, unpuckered of its frown, bloomed suddenly, like a tea rose opening. Even, pointed, narrow teeth, to fit the narrowness of her delicate, childish jaw, flashed into that smile, completely destroying the picture of a rather sad little old woman which she might have posed for before.

"All right, Betsy!" Sally cried, jumping to her feet. "But all of you will have to work twice as hard after I've play-acted for you, or Stone-Face will skin us alive."

Her smile was reflected in the three oldish little faces of the children squatting on the floor. The rags with which they had been wiping up surplus water after Sally's vigorous scrubbing were abandoned, and the three of them, moving in unison like mindless sheep, cl.u.s.tered close to Sally, following her with adoring eyes as she switched a sheet off one of the cots.

"This is my ermine robe," she declared. "Thelma, run and shut the door.... Now, this is my royal crown," she added, seizing her long, thick braid of black hair. Her nimble, thin fingers searched for and found three crimped wire hairpins which she secreted in the meshes of the plait. In a trice her small head was crowned with its own magnificent glory, the braid wound coronet-fashion over her ears and low upon her broad, white forehead.

"Say, 'A royal queen am I,'" six-year-old Betsy shrilled, clasping her hands in ecstasy. "And don't forget to make up a verse about me, Sal-lee! I'm a princess! I've got on white satin and little red shoes, ain't I, Sal-lee?"

Sally was marching grandly up and down the barrack-like dormitory, holding Betsy's hand, the train of her "ermine robe" upheld by the two other little girls in faded gingham, and her dramatically deepened voice was chanting "verses" which she had composed on other such occasions and to which she was now adding, when the door was thrown open and a booming voice rang out:

"Sally Ford! What in the world does this mean? On a _Sat.u.r.day_ morning!"

The two little "pages" dropped the "ermine robe"; the little "princess"

shrank closer against the "queen," and all four, Sally's voice leading the chorus, chanted in a monotonous sing-song: "Good morning, Mrs.

Stone. We hope you are well." It was the good morning salutation which, at the matron's orders, invariably greeted her as she made her morning rounds of the state orphanage.

"Good morning, children," Mrs. Stone, the head matron of the asylum answered severely but automatically. She never spoke except severely, unless it happened that a trustee or a visitor was accompanying her.

"As a punishment for playing at your work you will spend an hour of your Sat.u.r.day afternoon playtime in the weaving room. And Betsy, if I find your weaving all snarled up like it was last Sat.u.r.day 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 inst.i.tutional whine. "Oh, please let me keep it, Mrs. Stone!"

But the matron had tossed the bit of blue gla.s.s 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.

"Mean old thing! Always b.u.t.tin' in! Can't let us have no fun at all!

Some other kid'll find Thelma's sapphire and keep it offen her-"

"It isn't a sapphire," Sally said dully, her brush beginning to describe new semi-circles on the pine floor. "It's like she said-just a piece of broken old bottle. And she said she'd try to find you a doll, Thelma."

"You _said_ it was a sapphire, Sally. You said it was worth millions and millions of dollars. It _was_ a sapphire, long as you said it was, Sally!" Thelma sobbed, as grieved for the loss of illusion as for the loss of her treasure.

"I reckon I'm plumb foolish to go on play-acting all the time," Sally Ford said dully.

The three little girls and the 16-year-old "mother" of them scrubbed in silence for several minutes, doggedly hurrying to make up for lost time.

Then Thelma, who could never nurse grief or anger, spoke cheerfully:

"Reckon the new kid's gettin' her phys'cal zamination. When _I_ come into the 'sylum you had to nearly boil me alive. 'N Mrs. Stone cut off all my hair clean to the skin. 'N 'en n.o.body wouldn't 'dopt me 'cause I looked like sich a scarecrow. But I got lotsa hair now, ain't I, Sal-lee?"

"Oh, somebody'll be adopting you first thing you know, and then I won't have any Thelma," Sally smiled at her.

"Say, Sal-lee" Clara wheedled, "why didn't n.o.body ever 'dopt you? _I_ think you're awful pretty. Sometimes it makes me feel all funny and cry-ey inside, you look so awful pretty. When you're play-actin'," she amended honestly. Sally Ford moved the big brush with angry vigor, while her pale face colored a dull red. "I ain't-I mean, I'm not pretty at all, Clara. But thank you just the same. I used to want to be adopted, but now I don't. I want to hurry up and get to be eighteen so's I can leave the asylum and make my own living. I want-" but she stopped herself in time. Not to these open-mouthed, wide-eared children could she tell her dream of dreams.

"But why _wasn't_ you adopted, Sal-lee?" Betsy, the baby of the group, insisted. "You been here forever and ever, ain't you?"

"Since I was four years old," Sally admitted from between lips held tight to keep them from trembling. "When I was little as you, Betsy, one of the big girls told me I was sickly and awf'ly tiny and scrawny when I was brought in, so n.o.body wanted to adopt me. They don't like sickly babies," she added bitterly. "They just want fat little babies with curly hair. Seems to me like the Lord oughta made all orphans pretty, with golden curly hair."

"I know why Sally wasn't 'dopted," Thelma clamored for attention. "I heard Miss Pond say it was a sin and a shame the way old Stone-Face has kept Sally here, year in and year out, jist 'cause she's so good to us little kids. Miss Pond said Sally is better'n any trained nurse when us kids get sick and that she does more work than any 'big girl' they ever had here. That's why you ain't been 'dopted, Sally."

"I know it," Sally confessed in a low voice. "But I couldn't be mean to the babies, just so they'd want to get rid of me and let somebody adopt me. Besides," she added, "I'm scared of people-outside. I'm scared of all grown-up people, especially of adopters," she blurted miserably. "I can't sashay up and down before 'em and act cute and laugh and pretend like I've got a sweet disposition and like I'm crazy about 'em. I don't look pretty a bit when the adopters send for me. I can't play-act then."

"You're bashful, Sal-lee," Clara told her shrewdly. "I'm not bashful-much, except when visitors come and we have to show off our company manners. I hate visitors! They whisper about us, call us 'poor little things,' and think they're better'n us."

The floor of the big room had been completely scrubbed, and was giving out a moist odor of yellow soap when Miss Pond, who worked in the office on the first floor of the big main building, arrived leading a reluctant little girl by the hand.

To the four orphans in faded blue and white gingham the newcomer looked unbelievably splendid, more like the "princess" that Betsy had been impersonating than like a mortal child. Her golden hair hung in precisely arranged curls to her shoulders. Her dress was of pink crepe de chine, trimmed with many yards of cream-colored lace. There were pink silk socks and little white kid slippers. And her pretty face, though it was streaked with tears, had been artfully coated with white powder and tinted, on cheeks and lips, with carmine rouge.

"This is Eloise Durant, girls," said Miss Pond, who was incurably sentimental and kind to orphans. "She's feeling a little homesick now and I know you will all try to make her happy. You'll take charge of her, won't you, Sally dear?"

"Yes, Miss Pond," Sally answered automatically, but her arms were already yearning to gather the little bundle of elegance and tears and homesickness.

"And Sally," Miss Pond said nervously, lowering her voice in the false hope that the weeping child might not hear her, "Mrs. Stone says her hair must be washed and then braided, like the other children's. Eloise tells us it isn't naturally curly, that her mother did it up on kid curlers every night. Her aunt's been doing it for her since her mother-died."

"I don't want to be an orphan," the newcomer protested pa.s.sionately, a white-slippered foot flying out suddenly and kicking Miss Pond on the shin.

It was then that Sally took charge. She knelt, regardless of frantic, kicking little feet, and put her arms about Eloise Durant. She began to whisper to the terror-stricken child, and Miss Pond scurried away, her kind eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, her kind heart swelling with impractical plans for finding luxurious homes and incredibly kind foster parents for all the orphans in the asylum-but especially for those with golden curly hair and blue eyes. For Miss Pond was a born "adopter," with all the typical adopter's prejudices and preferences.