want to leave Jenny, but we told her she must get out a little or she
would get sick too. Mary said that everyone stared at her, and some of
the crowd at the corner were going to guy her, but she gave them one
look, and they said nothing. I stayed with Jenny and she talked about
her mother all the time that she was gone and about the home and the
little berg where she comes from. She is crazy to get back, cause I
think she knows it won't be for long, and she wants to pass in her
checks with the folks around her. She said to me, "Oh, Nan, I have had
my lesson, and it has cost me dear, but I won't kick, as I wouldn't have
been satisfied till I had tried it." But I thought, if all the preachers
could bring up a few girls who think they want to try the Great White
Way, and let them take a good look at Jenny, it would be better than all
their sermons. Any girl with half a brain would say, "Oh, little
Oskaloosa is good enough for me."

No, I won't bring Billy up to see you, Kate. He is big enough to
remember things, and I don't want him to know what a prison is, and his
first remembrance of his mother must not be that he saw her behind the
bars. I know you want to see him and I can understand it, because I
love him too, but I would die without ever touching his hand rather than
ever let him see me in stripes. He will be five years old when you get
out Kate, and he grows cunninger each day. He don't look a bit like Jim,
has got our curly reddish hair, and his eyes are blue like yours instead
of brown like mine. I suppose I orter have his hair cut, as it is so
thick and curly, but I can't bear to, as it is the only thing he has of
mine, and I like to look at it, and feel he is a little bit like me. I
make him up a bed at night on the morris chair, cause Jenny's mother
sleeps with me, and do you know, at night when she is sound asleep if
she hears Jenny cough, she raises up and listens and if it don't stop
right away, she slips out of bed and goes into her room. I tell you, I
am going to have a mother some day if I have to get you to steal one for
me.

Yours,
_Nan_.

IV

_Dear Kate_:

I ain't wrote you for quite a time, cause I have been in a lot of
trouble, and so busy and kinda tired out that any time I set down long
enough to write a letter, I go to sleep. Billy had an awful accident. I
was making some hot chocklate in my room, and he pulled the pan over on
him and burned his hand and arm and shoulder. I