Because she was leaving the orphanage for a temporary new home on the Carson farm, Sally was permitted to take her regular Saturday night bath that afternoon. In spite of her terror of the future, the girl who had never known any home but a state orphan asylum felt a thrill of adventure as she splashed in a painted tin tub, gloriously alone, unhurried by clamorous girls waiting just outside. The cold water—there was no hot water for bathing from April first to October first—made her skin glow and tingle. As she dried herself on a ragged wisp of grayish-white Turkish toweling, Sally surveyed her slim, white body with shy pride. Shorn of the orphanage uniform she might have been any pretty young girl budding into womanhood, so slim and rounded and pinky-white she was. “I guess I’m kinda pretty,” Sally whispered to herself, as she thrust her face close to the small, wavery mirror that could not quite succeed in destroying her virginal loveliness. “Sweet sixteen and—never been kissed,” she smiled to herself, then bent forward and gravely laid her pink, deliciously curved lips against the mirrored ones. Then, in a panic lest she be too late to see kind Miss Pond, she jerked on the rest of her clothing. “Dear Sally, how sweet you look!” Miss Pond clasped her hands in admiration as Sally slipped, breathless, into the locker-room that contained the clothes of all the girls of her dormitory. “Did you bring the card that tells all about me—and my mother?” Sally brushed the compliment aside and demanded in an eager whisper. “No, dearie, I was afraid Mrs. Stone might want it to make an entry about Mr. Carson’s taking you for the summer, but I copied the data. You go ahead with your packing while I tell you what I found out,” Miss Pond answered nervously, but her pale gray eyes were sparkling with pleasure in her mild little escapade. Sally unlocked her own particular locker with the key that always hung on a string about her neck, but almost immediately she whirled upon Miss Pond, her eyes imploring. “It won’t take me a minute to pack, Miss Pond. Please go right on and tell me!” “Well, Sally, I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell.” Miss Pond smoothed a folded bit of paper apologetically. “The record says you were brought here May 9, 1912, just twelve years ago, by a woman who said you were her daughter. She gave your birthday as June 2, 1908, and her name as Mrs. Nora Ford, a widow, aged 28—” “Oh, she’s young!” Sally breathed ecstatically. Then her face clouded, as her nimble brain did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. “But she’d be forty now, wouldn’t she? Forty seems awfully old—” “Forty is comparatively young, Sally!” Miss Pond, who was looking regretfully back upon forty herself, said rather tartly. “But let me hurry on. She gave poverty and illness as her reasons for asking the state to take care of you. She said your father was dead.”