PRELUDE By EDGAR VALENTINE SMITH From Harper’s

WHEN she was fifteen years old Selina Jo was doing a man’s work in Pruitt’s turpentine orchard; properly, though, her story begins earlier than this.

It was shortly before his daughter was born that Shug Hudsill brought his young wife, Marthy, to a sandy land homestead—twenty-five miles from the nearest railroad—in that section of the country which borders the Gulf of Mexico. There followed shortly the inevitable log-rolling, at which the neighbours—mostly Hudsills themselves—contributed their labour. Shug furnished refreshments in the form of “shinny,” an unpalatable, but unusually potent, native rum. Otherwise, his part in the erection of his future home was largely advisory. Despite this, though, the house, a two-room cabin of the “saddle-bag” type, was soon erected. Hand-split pine boards covered the roof and gave fair promise of keeping out the rain. An unglazed window and a door in each room, which would be closed with rough wooden shutters during inclement weather, served for ventilation and lighting. A stick-and-clay chimney at one end of the cabin gave outlet to the single fireplace which was to answer the dual purpose of cooking and heating.

By devious methods Shug accumulated two or three runty, tick-infested cows and a few razorback hogs. These were left, in the main, to shift for themselves. There were tough native grasses available and the canebrakes in Shoalwater River were close by. During severe weather such of the cows as chanced to be giving a few pints of thin, watery milk daily were fed a little home-grown fodder and corn on the ear. With proboscides inordinately sharpened for the purpose, the hogs probed for succulent roots in the rank undergrowth of the nearby swamp. When hog-killing season arrived Shug would shoulder his gun and slouch away for his winter’s supply of meat. Neighbours charged it against him that he was not always careful to see to it that they were his own shotes which he killed. Since it was a simple matter, though, to snip off the telltale ear markings of a dead pig, his pilferings, if a fact, were never proved.

Corn sprouted slowly in the thin soil; it grew up dispiritedly and came to maturity stunted as to blade, stalk, and ear. Sweet potatoes yielded generously in new ground; each year a fresh plot was cleared, broken, and planted to these. A patch of sugar cane was always grown for molasses; a portion of this, it was generally conceded, was finally made into “shinny,” since Shug was known to be an adept at its manufacture. Certain it is that he made frequent extended trips away from home with his wagon and yoke of oxen, never troubling to explain the reason for his absence.

It was amid these surroundings, sufficient in themselves, one would have said, to hinder physical, mental, and moral growth, that the girl Selina Jo was born. The occasion was in no sense of the word an event with Shug and Marthy. Since all married people of their acquaintance had children, the baby simply represented, to them, the inevitable. With the birth of the child, though, Marthy became barren.

For the first eighteen months of her existence the baby crawled about the cabin unnamed. Then it occurred to Marthy that their offspring ought to be christened.

“Shug,” she suggested casually, “seems to me we ort to be namin’ that air young ’un.”

Shug, lolling in the shade of a water oak, shifted his quid and spat disinterestedly. “I ain’t objectin’ none,” he replied.

“How ’bout callin’ her ‘S’liny Jo’?” Marthy asked.

“Fittin’ enough name fer her, I reckin,” Shug yawned.

As the child grew up she came to accept her parents as they had long since accepted her—merely as a bald fact. There was never the slightest evidence of parental affection upon the one side or of filial attachment upon the other.

Once Marthy came upon Shug whipping the girl with a switch.

“What you whippin’ her fer?” she asked. Her tone was one of simple curiosity, nothing else.

“All young ’uns needs it,” Shug replied virtuously, as he tossed the switch aside. “Hadn’t been my daddy usetah whale me powerful, I wouldn’t a been nigh the man I am now; not nigh.”

It was a matter for remark between the parents that, even at a tender age, Selina Jo rarely emitted any outcry under punishment. There burned in her sloe-black eyes, though, the flame of an emotion which she checked upon the surface.

One would have expected the girl to respond to the influence of heredity. Her parents, the cattle, the hogs, even the crops about her were stunted, half-starved in appearance. By contrast, Selina Jo, upon a daily ration made up almost exclusively of corn pone, molasses, and home-cured pork as salt as ocean brine, defied all known dietary laws, and flourished amazingly. She was precocious, too. When she was only seven years old she could swear just as well—rather, just as wickedly—as could Shug himself. She learned early, though, that, as a source of information, her parents were practically nil. Thenceforth, the questions that had rushed to her lips were succeeded by a look of eternal interrogation in her sombre eyes.

It was shortly after her twelfth birthday that a young school-teacher—the only one the community ever knew—came into the Hudsill settlement. Selina Jo was grudgingly allowed to attend the school. For six months the young man’s enthusiasm held out. Then it waned and died. Few of the older people could either read or write, and the opinion among them seemed to be universal that what was good enough for them was good enough for their offspring. But before the school closed Selina Jo had learned the alphabet and a portion of the old-fashioned first reader.

She missed the school, and she always kept, close at hand, her thumbed and dog-eared book, the only one that she possessed. The school-teacher had lighted the fires of ambition within her. She came to be troubled by the realization that her mental development was lagging behind her physical growth.

“S’liny Jo,” she informed herself one day in a fit of musing, “you air as p’izen strong as a gallon o’ green shinny, but you don’t know skercely nothin’.” A moment later she added dejectedly: “Ner ain’t got no chanchet o’ learnin’, neether; not nary par-tick-le of a chancet!”

Shoalwater River afforded her chief means of diversion. She never remembered when or how she learned to swim. Every day that the weather permitted she enjoyed a plunge in the river. Soon she noticed that no less pleasant than the contact of the water with her naked body was the comfortable after-feeling of cleanliness. Following this, came a feeling of repugnance toward her shiftless and slovenly parents.

She had long since begun to assist with the crops. With the manure scraped from the cow lot she made the beds for the potatoes. At planting time she pulled the slips and set them out. She hoed the sugar cane and thinned the corn. During harvest she did almost as much work as Shug and Marthy combined.

Before she was fourteen she had broken a pair of young steers to the yoke. She split the rails and laid the fence for a new potato patch. Using for the purpose the young oxen which she had broken, she prepared the ground for planting. She was as tall as her father now, a slender, wiry creature, her symmetrical young body as free from blemish as the trunk of a healthy pine tree.

A vague unrest troubled her at times, though. Something occurred one day which intensified this. In a corner of the cabin she found a dust-covered photograph. Brushing it off, she gazed upon a face that was unfamiliar. She took the picture to Marthy.

“Maw,” she asked, “who is this?”

Her mother glanced at it indifferently. “Me,” she answered listlessly.

“You?” Selina Jo gasped.

“Yeah. Ruther, it usetah be. Tuck when I married yore paw.”

Selina Jo scanned the comely pictured face for some likeness to the slatternly creature who had given her birth. Wild resentment against something—she scarcely knew what—flamed in her heart. Suddenly she dashed the photograph to the floor and hurried from the cabin. As one reads the chronicle of her words, it must be remembered that her vocabulary was patterned after that of her father.

“Oh, Goddlemighty!” she burst out tempestuously, “I don’t want to be like her! I ain’t goin’ to, neither!”

Her acquaintances were limited to the score of families, most of them relatives, and all of them mental and moral replicas of her own, who lived near by. There was an almost abandoned church in the neighbourhood where, at rare intervals, some itinerant preacher held services. Upon one occasion, though, Shug took the family to preaching in what was known as the Briggs settlement which was ten miles nearer the railroad. It was here that Selina Jo had it impressed upon her young mind just how people of her stripe were looked upon by those cast in another mould.

Shortly after they had seated themselves in the church, Shug, uncouth and unshaven on the men’s side, and she and her mother on that reserved for her sex, Selina Jo heard one of the women whisper to her neighbour:

“Some o’ that Hudsill tribe!”

As the girl caught the slur in the words her face flushed darkly. She began to notice the unfavourable looks with which the men of the congregation were regarding her father. Even the children stared superciliously toward her mother and herself. Puzzled, vaguely hurt, at first she wondered why.

Lingering just outside the church at the close of services, she waited, shyly hopeful that some one would speak to her. No one paid her the slightest heed. In a land where a lack of hospitality was the one unpardonable sin, this alone was enough to convince her that something was terribly wrong somewhere. But she held her peace until they had completed the tedious homeward journey.

“Maw,” she demanded abruptly, as soon as they were alone, “how come we ain’t like other folks?”

“What air you talkin’ about?” Marthy intoned querulously.

“Them folks in that air Briggs settlement.”

“Wa’l?”

“They looked slanchwise at Paw when we went in an’ set down.” Selina Jo waited a moment, her face clouding at the thought. “An’ them li’l’ old gals looked slanchwise at me, too. Durn ’em!”

“How kin I he’p the way they looked at us?” Marthy whined. “Treatin’ us thatta way just ’cause we air pore.”

“’Tweren’t that, neither,” the girl insisted stubbornly. “Them men—most of ’em—was wearin’ overhalls. The school-teacher said rich folks don’t wear them kind o’ clo’es to meetin’.”

“Tryin’ to git better ’n yore raisin’, air you?” Marthy suddenly showed unwonted spirit. “Wa’l, gal, you kin just make up yore mind to be like yore pore maw an’——”

“I ain’t goin’ to be like you!” The words shot out with sudden passion. “I ain’t!”

“God ha’ mercy!” Marthy’s usually expressionless face showed a trace of surprise at this outburst. “But I’ve allus said seein’ lots o’ things gits notions inta young ’uns’ heads what ain’t good fer ’em.”

“Ner that ain’t all I seed, neither,” Selina Jo retorted. “They didn’t none o’ them folks—not nary one o’ ’em—ast us home to eat a Sunday dinner with ’em.”

At the conclusion of the church service she had seen invitations to the noonday meal being extended and accepted right and left by the Briggs settlement householders. Since it was the custom to include the veriest stranger in these, the fact that none had been offered her people left room for only one conclusion: the Hudsills were looked upon by their neighbours as being unworthy to receive one. Slowly the impression fastened itself upon her brain that her family was hopelessly low in the social scale—“poison low-down,” she would have phrased it. This conviction gripped her. It stung—and it stayed with her.

Fortunately, something occurred about this time to divert her thoughts temporarily. Three miles from Shug’s home, Pruitt Brothers, turpentine operators, established a woods commissary. Selina Jo’s first visit to the store left her gasping with pleasure. Filled with the usual gaudy assortment carried in stock by the general country store, to the half-starved eyes and soul of the woods-bred girl, the place was a wonderland. Dress goods in loud patterns dazzled her sight; vari-colored ribbons flaunted themselves tantalizingly before her gaze. But the one thing that charmed her, that held her spellbound, was a cheap, ready-made gingham dress. She made frequent unnecessary trips to the store merely to feast her eyes upon it. She would look from it to the faded homespun that she wore and sigh enviously. Once she even mustered the courage to ask the price. It was an insignificant sum, but the thought struck her with sickening force that it might just as well have been a thousand dollars. She had never owned a piece of money.

Slowly, as her yearning for the dress became almost unbearable, a plan formed in her mind. Coming in from her tasks one day, she found Shug, just returned from one of his mysterious periodical trips.

“Paw,” she began timidly, “I—I got a hankerin’.”

“S’pose you have?” Shug’s manner was more surly than usual. “A hankerin’ never hurt nobody, yet.”

“But, but I shore ’nough want sump’m.”

“Wantin’ an’ gitten’ is diffe’ent things. What is it?”

“They’s the purtiest dress over to Pruitt’s store,” Selina Jo began eagerly, “an’ it’s made outen real gingham.”

“Gingham?” Shug whirled about with a snarl. “What air you talkin’ about, gal?”

Selina Jo’s heart sank. “I ain’t never had nary one,” she offered placatingly. “An’——”

“Ner ain’t never li’ble to, neether. Homespun’s good enough fer yore pore maw an’ it’ll hatter be good enough fer you. I ain’t goin’ to be workin’ myse’f to skin an’ bone to be fittin’ out no young ’un in fancy riggin’s.”

“But, Paw, it don’t cost much.”

“It costes just that much more ’n you’re goin’ to git. Shet up!”

It was then that Selina Jo unfolded her plan. “I’m goin’ to git me that air dress,” she announced dispassionately. “I’m aimin’ to pay fer it myse’f, too.”

“How?”

“Yearnin’ the money at public work.”

“You?” Shug snorted derisively. “Whare’ll you git any public work?”

“In Pruitt’s turkentime orchard. They’s a heap o’ the work I kin do. I could do scrapin’ er dippin’; reckin I could even do hackin’.”

Shug had slumped into the one comfortable chair in the room. Turning his head, he glared at his daughter.

“You air not goin’ to work in no turkentime orchard,” he rasped. “You air goin’ to stay right here an’ he’p yore pore maw an’ me. I told you oncet to shet up!”

It struck Selina Jo suddenly that life was, somehow, terribly one-sided and unfair. Other girls in the community, who didn’t work as hard as she did, were beginning to wear gingham dresses for Sunday. She thought bitterly that in return for her slaving she had received bed and board—nothing more. By everything that was right, she reasoned, she had earned at least one store-bought dress. Yet it was roughly denied her. Some of the thoughts which had been haunting her for months struggled for expression. Her soul cried out against what was a patent injustice. But she managed to speak calmly.

“Fer as I kin figger it out, Paw,” she said, “I been doin’ my sheer o’ keepin’ this here fambly up. I broke them last yoke o’ steers, an’ one of ’em you was afeared to tech. I’ve split rails an’ laid fences; I’ve broke new ground. An’ the fu’st time I ast fer anything you say I cain’t have it.”

She ceased speaking for a moment, but her steady gaze never left Shug’s face.

“Now, I’m goin’ to work fer Pruitt,” she continued slowly, “till I git me the money I need.”

Something must have occurred during Shug’s recent trip—probably a hurried flight from officers—to increase his normal perverseness. He had risen from his chair. Taking a heavy leather strap from the wall, he started toward Selina Jo.

“You air, huh?” Advancing, he fondled the strap suggestively. “You’ll git a larrupin’, that’s what!”

With the first evidence of her father’s intention, Selina Jo’s face had flushed a brick-red. Now it paled suddenly. She had not even been threatened with corporal punishment for years. Wild rebellion surged within her. A carving knife lay upon the rude deal table beside which she was standing. One slim, brown hand dropped down beside the knife. Her emotion visible only in the tumultuous heaving of her breast and the white, set expression of her face, she waited, motionless, her dark, sombre eyes gazing unwaveringly into Shug’s face.

“Paw,” she said evenly, “just you tech me oncet with that strop an’, as shore as God gives me stren’th, I’ll cut yore heart out.”

An innate coward, Shug recognized a danger sign when he saw it. The hand which held the strap dropped to his side. He backed slowly away.

“You ... you ...” he sputtered and stopped.

“You an’ Maw been sayin’,” Selina Jo continued, “that I’m tryin’ to be better ’n my raisin.’ But I ain’t forgot how them Briggs settlement folks looked at us slanchwise. ’Tweren’t ’cause we was p’izen pore, neither. They knowed, somehow, we was plumb low-down an’ ornery. That’s why they didn’t none of ’em ast us to a Sunday dinner. They seed we was trash. Course I’m honin’ to be better ’n that kind o’ raisin’—an’ I’m goin’ to, too!”

Shug had retreated to the doorway, where he stood watching this new daughter of his with furtive, fearful eyes. The meanest of petty tyrants, when he held the whip hand, doubtless he expected that Selina Jo would exhibit the same trait. There was nothing of the bully in the girl, though. Threatened with what she considered to be undeserved punishment, she had simply acted upon the dictates of her immature mind and had seized upon the only means at hand to escape it.

It was several moments before Shug mustered courage to speak. “Sence you air goin’ to do public work,” he whined presently, “’tain’t nothin’ but right you ort to pay fer yore bed an’ board.”

Selina Jo was glad to agree to this arrangement. When informed of it later, Marthy sullenly acquiesced. She would have to do the housework now, which was no more to her liking than the realization that Shug would permanently pocket the money for their daughter’s board.

It was the next day that Selina Jo sought out Lige Tuttle, woods foreman for Pruitt Brothers.

“I’m lookin’ fer a job,” she announced bluntly.

“Sorry,” Tuttle answered brusquely, “but all our cooks are niggers.”

“Cook?” was the scornful answer. “I ain’t astin’ to be no cook. I want shore ’nough work.”

Tuttle smiled patronizingly. “What can you do?’

“Scrapin’, dippin’, er hackin’,” was the confident answer.

“You?” Tuttle laughed softly. “Why, that’s a man’s work. It’s hard.”

“Any harder ’n breakin’ bull yearlin’s to the yoke? Er splittin’ rails an’ breakin’ new ground?”

“Mean to say you’ve done all that?”

“I most bardaceously have!”

Labour was scarce at the time. Tuttle considered the girl’s request carefully, asked a few more questions, and decided to take a chance.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“S’liny Jo.”

“What else?”

It was the first time Selina Jo had ever been asked her surname; she felt the blood rush to her face.

“What’s your last name?” Tuttle repeated.

The answer came almost inaudibly: “Hudsill.”

“Shug Hudsill’s young ’un?”

“How kin I he’p it?” the girl burst out passionately. “If you’d a been borned a Hudsill, you’d hatter be one, too!”

“Don’t get mad, child.” There was something in the spirit of this strange creature that Tuttle could not understand; but he respected it. “I wasn’t aimin’ to low-rate you none just because of your daddy. Come here to-morrow mornin’, an’ I’ll try you out.”

Selina Jo found that the work was hard. The dry, slippery pine needles underfoot made walking itself a task. She carried a heavy bucket into which she dipped the raw gum, emptying the bucket, when filled, into barrels scattered about the orchard. From sun-up till sunset, and later, she toiled; not once, though, did she grumble. She was too foolishly happy. What she was undergoing was the prelude to real existence, as she saw it. What better, she asked herself, could any strong, healthy girl desire than a steady job dipping turpentine for which she was paid real money?

Occasional passersby, strangers to the vicinity, amazed at seeing a girl engaged in such unusual work, would pause to ask friendly questions. The first flush of pleasure that this gave Selina Jo was quickly erased by the bitter after-tang of reflection: these people were kind because they did not know she was a Hudsill.

While with practice she developed skill, it was three months before she had saved the money she needed. The gingham dress had been laid aside for her. But her ambition had soared. A beautiful dress above a pair of bare legs and feet would never do. Then, too, since her only item of headgear was the sunbonnet which she wore every day, she would need, besides shoes and stockings, a hat.

The day came at last, though, when she could make her purchases. With her arms filled with bundles, she started out joyously on her three-mile walk home.

A half mile from the commissary she paused indecisively at a crossroads. The right-hand road, leading to Shoalwater River, meant the lengthening of her journey a full mile; but the river, with its promise of a cooling plunge, enticed her. As she stood hesitant, trying to decide, she observed a stranger approaching on horseback. She drew aside to let him pass, but he reined in his horse and hailed her.

“Evenin’, little sister! Live hereabouts?”

“Down the left-hand fork a piece.” Selina Jo bent her steady glance upon the stranger. “Who air you?”

“I’m Holmes—sheriff of the county.”

Instinctively the girl drew back. “What air you wantin’ o’ me? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Lord bless you, little sister,” the sheriff laughed, “I’m not after you. Thought maybe as you live round here you might tell me something I want to know.”

It seemed that a murder had recently been committed in the bay-shore country ten miles distant. Circumstances pointed to the guilt of two men who had been arrested. Assuming that the murderers had passed through the Hudsill section en route to or from the scene of the crime, the sheriff was seeking evidence to prove this.

Strangers were enough of a rarity in the neighbourhood to be remembered easily. Selina Jo recalled two men who had passed that way whose description fitted those charged with the murder.

Sheriff Holmes was elated. “Would you like a trip to Eastview?” he asked.

“Eastview?” Selina Jo’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s town, ain’t it—whare the railroad trains is at?”

“Yes. We’ll want you there a week from to-day.” The sheriff filled in a blank subpœna and extended it to the girl. “Look me up in the courthouse soon as you get to town.”

Selina Jo’s breathless announcement that she was going to court created a flurry at home until Shug learned why she had been summoned. Then he breathed easily.

It was decided that she could use the oxen and wagon for the trip, as Eastview was twenty-five miles distant. This method of travel, being slow, would necessitate an early start on the day before the trial. When that day dawned, though, one of the oxen was found to be indisposed. Selina Jo assembled a lunch of corn pone and side meat, filled a small bottle with molasses, and, dressed in her new finery, set out on foot.

Within an hour the new shoes began to pinch. She took them off, tied them together by their strings and slung them over her shoulder. The stockings were rolled into balls and stuffed into her pockets.

Late in the afternoon she bathed her feet and legs in a brook just outside Eastview and donned shoes and stockings again.

It was dusk when she arrived at the sheriff’s office. An overflow crowd at the single hotel necessitated her staying with Sheriff Holmes’s family that night.

With the inborn timidity of the woods-bred girl, she remained there until summoned to court in the late forenoon of the following day. By the time her evidence was concluded, though, she had partially overcome her shyness, and was ready for sightseeing.

Wandering about the interior of the courthouse, she marvelled at the white plaster walls. Then she watched several people using the sanitary drinking fountain. Presently she found courage to try it herself. The technic she found to be rather difficult, but after she had mastered it she became a frequent patron.

Later, she ventured outside the courthouse.

Sheriff Holmes found her during the noon recess. She had commandeered a small goods box which she was using as a seat. Her enraptured gaze was fastened upon a scene across the street. Three large, two-story frame buildings, painted a dazzling white, stood upon a lot which occupied an entire block. Beneath the branches of huge water oaks, were scores of girls, dressed in white blouses and dark-blue skirts.

Sheriff Holmes smiled understandingly. “Like it?”

Selina Jo did not even turn her head. “Whose is them air li’l gals?” she asked breathlessly.

“The state’s—for the present,” was the answer.

“Who?”

“The state. That’s the reformatory for girls.”

It was plain that the remark conveyed no information to Selina Jo. “Do which?” she asked.

“When girls—young ones, like you—break the law,” the sheriff explained, “they bring them here to be reformed.”

“What’s re-formed?”

“Well ... it’s like this: before they let a girl go again, she has to prove that she’s been changed for the better.”

“Changed?” Selina Jo looked up with a quick indrawn breath. “They make ’em diffe’ent f’um what they was?”

“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.

Her dreams were peopled with girls in white blouses and blue skirts, thousands of them, it seemed to her. They were all within an iron-fenced inclosure, beckoning to her to enter; and she was always just on the outside.

With morning came thoughts of her work in the turpentine orchard. Inexplicably, a vague dissatisfaction awoke within her. The idea began to burn itself into her consciousness that, though she might spend a lifetime in honest toil there, she would always be referred to as “one of that Hudsill tribe.” Apparently there was no escape from that.

During breakfast she was unusually quiet and thoughtful. With a shy acknowledgment of thanks, she accepted the liberal lunch provided by the sheriff’s wife and made her adieus. Two miles outside the town she left the highway. A hundred yards from the road she seated herself upon a log and grimly prepared to wait.

Darkness had fallen when she again entered Eastview and cautiously approached the reformatory from the rear. She scaled the iron fence with comparative ease. Crouching low, she crept toward a lighted window on the ground floor. Two girls of about her own age sat at a study table. Standing before the window, Selina Jo spoke.

“Kin I come in?” she asked softly.

One of the girls screamed slightly; the other, after her first involuntary start of amazement, seemed wonderfully selfpossessed.

“Sure, Rube!” she invited cordially. “Step right in!”

Selina Jo climbed over the low window sill into the room.

“What you doin’ here?” one of the girls asked.

“I’m j’inin’ o’ this here re-formin’ place,” was the unruffled answer.

“You’re wha-a-at?”

Very simply Selina Jo made known her intentions.

“But you’ll be caught, sure as shootin’,” one of the girls objected. “In the first place you’ve got no uniform.”

Naturally, Selina Jo expected to be discovered sooner or later; but she had prepared for this eventuality—as she thought.

“Maybe we can fix that,” the other girl broke in eagerly. “There’s that old blouse of mine and your extra skirt. Gee! I wish we could put it over! Wouldn’t old Iron Jaw be wild?”

Between them they rigged a uniform for Selina Jo. At the nightly inspection she crept under the bed. Later, she slept on a pallet.

The fortunate indisposition of a girl across the hall solved the breakfast problem. Selina Jo, taking the vacant place in the formation, passed undiscovered for the moment.

Among the many contingencies which she could not have provided against, though, were the sharp eyes and keen memory for faces possessed by Mary Shane, the matron in charge. As the girls were forming for certain duties shortly after breakfast, Selina Jo felt a heavy hand upon her shoulder. She looked up into the stern face of the matron.

“What are you doing here?” was the curt inquiry.

“Me?” Selina Jo’s attempt at surprise was ludicrous. “I—I b’long here, ma’am.”

“You do? You ought to know me then. What is my name?”

Instinct told the girl that this must be the matron. “Old Iron Jaw,” she answered unabashed.

Mary Shane smiled grimly. “Come with me,” she ordered.

She led the way, Selina Jo following meekly, to her little cubby-hole of an office.

“Now, then,” the matron commanded sternly, “tell me the truth. How did you get in here?”

“I—I clumb that fence.”

“Why?”

“Just ’cause, ma’am, I nacherly got to git re-formed,” was the perfectly serious answer. “I ralely b’long here. I’m so p’izen mean they ain’t no other place fitten fer me.”

“What’s your name?”

Now it came, not hesitantly, but proudly—even defiantly: “S’liny Jo Hudsill!”

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.

“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.”

“Hm-m-m!” Superintendent Wellborn’s gray eyes twinkled; but he did not smile outright. “Well ... the reformatory is fairly well satisfied with its present matron. Good-day, Mary Shane! Sit down, little girl.”

The matron closed the door and returned to her office. For nearly an hour she sat, idle, at her desk. It was the first of the month; there were statements to be prepared, reports to be rendered, bills to be checked. But it was patent that her mind was upon none of these things. From time to time she glanced up impatiently at some noise in the hallway. Presently there came the sound of hurrying footsteps. She whirled her chair about.

Selina Jo stood in the doorway. Questions, answers, were unnecessary. The flush in her cheeks, the flame in her sloe-black eyes, blazoned her happiness to the world. As she realized what the superintendent’s decision had been, an answering light gleamed, momentarily, in Mary Shane’s face. Characteristically, though, it was quenched upon the instant, as she slipped once more, automatically, into her habitual mask of granite.

But even a granite mask—since it is only a mask—cannot stifle a heart song; at best, it can only muffle it. For as she went about the prosaic business of acquainting Selina Jo with her duties, Mary Shane was well aware that, somewhere, deep within herself, a small voice was chanting, chanting over and over:

“For this one—just this one, Lord—who comes of her own accord to be changed, for this single one who wants to be made different, I thank Thee!”