Every June they came--farmers like Clem Carson, seeking "hired girls" whom they would not have to pay. Carson himself had taken three girls from the orphanage.
Rena Cooper, who had gone to the Carson farm when Sally was thirteen, had come back to the Home in September, a broken, dispirited thing--Rena, who had been so gay and bright and saucy. Annie Springer had been his choice the next year, and Annie had never come back. The story that drifted into the orphanage by some mysterious grapevine had it that Annie had found a "fellow" on the farm, a hired man, with whom she had wandered away without the formality of a marriage ceremony.
The third summer, when he could not have Sally, he had taken Ruby Presser, pretty, sweet little Ruby, who had been in love with Eddie Cobb, one of the orphaned boys, since she was thirteen or fourteen years old. Eddie had run away from the Home, after promising Ruby to come back for her and marry her when he was grown-up and making enough money for two to live on.
Ruby had gotten into mysterious trouble on the Carson farm--the "grapevine" never supplied concrete details--and Ruby had run away from the farm, only to be caught by the police and sent to the reformatory, the particular hell with which every orphan was threatened if she dared disobey even a minor rule of the Home. Delicate, sweet little Ruby in the reformatory--that evil place where "incorrigibles" poisoned the minds of good girls like Ruby Presser, made criminals of them, too.
Sally, remembering, as she cowered against the door of the orphanage office, was suddenly fiercely glad that Ruby had thrown herself from a fifth-floor window of the reformatory. Ruby, dead, was safe now from charity and evil and from queer, warped, ugly girls who whispered terrible things as they huddled on the cots of their cells.
"Oh, Sally, dear, what is the matter?" A soft, sighing voice broke in on Sally's grief and fear, a bony hand was laid comfortingly on Sally's dark head.
"Mr. Carson, that farmer who takes a girl every summer, is going to take me home with him tonight," Sally gulped.
"But that will be nice, Sally!" Miss Pond gushed. "You will have a real home, with plenty to eat and maybe some nice little dresses to wear, and make new friends--"