Sally’s hunted eyes glanced wildly about for a chance of escape and lighted upon the turning knob of the door. In a moment Clem Carson was edging in, his face slightly flushed, a tell-tale odor of whisky and cloves on his breath. “Little lady all ready to go?” he inquired with a suspiciously jovial laugh, which made Sally crouch lower in her chair. “Looking pretty as a picture, too! With two pretty girls in my house this summer, reckon I’ll have to stand guard with a shotgun to keep the boys away.” Word had gone round that Sally Ford was leaving the Home for the summer, and as Clem Carson and his new unpaid hired girl walked together down the long cement walk to where his car was parked at the curb, nearly three hundred little girls, packed like a herd of sheep in the wire-fenced playground adjoining the front lawn, sang out goodbys and good wishes. “Goodby Sal-lee! Hope you have a good time!” “Goodby, Sal-lee! Write me a letter, Sal-lee!” “Goodby, goodby!” Sally, waving her Sunday handkerchief, craned her neck for a last sight of those blue-and-white-ginghamed little girls, the only playmates and friends she had in the world. There were tears in her eyes, and, queerly, for she thought she hated the Home, a stab of homesickness shooting through her heart. How safe they were, there in the playground pen! How simple and sheltered life was in the Home, after all! Suddenly she knew, somehow, that it was the last time she would ever see it, or the children. Without a thought for the iron-clad “Keep off the grass” rule, Sally turned and ran, fleetly, her little figure as graceful as a fawn’s, over the thick velvet carpet of the lawn. When she reached the high fence that separated her from the other orphans, she spread her arms, as if she would take them all into her embrace. “Don’t forget me, kids!” she panted, her voice thick with tears. “I—I want to tell you I love you all, and I’m sorry for every mean thing I ever did to any of you, and I hope you all get adopted by rich papas and mamas and have ice cream every day! Goodby, kids! Goodby!” “Kiss me goodby, Sal-lee!” a little whining voice pleaded. Sally stooped and pressed her lips, through the fence opening, against the babyish mouth of little Eloise Durant, the newest and most forlorn orphan of them all. “Me, too, Sal-lee! Me, too! We won’t have nobody to play-act for us now!” Betsy wailed, pressing her tear-stained face against the wire. CHAPTER II A little later, when Sally was seated primly beside Clem Carson, jolting rapidly down the road that led past the orphanage toward the business district of the city, the farmer nudged her in the ribs and chuckled: “You’re quite a kissing-bug, ain’t you, Sally? How about a little kiss for your new boss?”