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 nobody 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 nobody 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 nobody 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.”