smiled wanly.

"I wanted to know, too, when I was green. I could just see the guard holding the gate open as I sailed off the grounds! It was a beautiful dream."

"Why couldn't you do it?"

"Marks," said Amy sententiously. "Parole in eighteen months means a perfect record right from the beginning. I thought I'd try for it, but, mercy, I've never even made high grade! Once I came within six weeks of it, but I let a dress go down to the laundry with a pin in it."

"They mark for a little thing like that?"

"My stars, yes! For less than that—buttons off, wrong apron in the recreation-room, and so on. I got my first mark for wearing my hair 'pomp.' They won't stand for it here. They want to make us as hideous as they can."

A lull threw the remarks of the girl with peculiar teeth into unsought prominence.

"Jim was a swell-looker," she was saying, "and a good spender when he was flush, but I used to tell him—"

"Delia!" The matron was on her feet leveling a rebuking finger at Jim's biographer. "You know better. Leave the room at once. All talking will cease."

The culprit scuffed sulkily out, and no further word was uttered till the end of the meal, when at a signal all rose and the matron observed in pontifical tones,

"Thou openest Thy hand!"

On this occasion Jean caught the response without difficulty. The words, "And Thou fillest all things living with plenteousness," seemed to emanate chiefly from the high-grade table, with a faint echo on the part of Amy Jeffries, in whom the ambition to eat from a cloth still persisted. At "plenteousness" one bold spirit snickered.

The file tramped up the two flights by which it had come, and scattered to its rooms. For twenty minutes Jean sat in darkness and dejection. Then the fretful bell clamored again, the doors yawned as before, the silent ranks re-formed, and the march below stairs was repeated. Their destination proved to be the recreation-room. In a dwelling this chamber would have been shunned. Here, compared with such other parts of the cottage as Jean had seen, it seemed blithesome. Potted geraniums made grateful oases of the window-sills. An innocuous print or two hung upon the walls.

As the girls found seats, the matron handed Jean a letter.

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