em to let me become one of the community.

"Sometimes girls are bad and so lazy they won't work, and then they
are punished. And when they prove incorrigible they are put in the
other building, which is a house of correction. But if a girl is good
and obedient and industrious she has no trouble, and may save up money
against the day when she is set at liberty, besides receives the good
recommendation of the Superieure, on which she may find honest
employment."

While the good Sister Agnes spoke truly, she dared not tell this child
the whole truth.

She dared not say that Le Bon Pasteur,--The Good Shepherd,--although
ostensibly a charitable institution, under religious auspices and
subsidized by the State, for the protection and education of orphan
girls during their minority, was practically a great factory which did
not come under the legal restrictions governing free labor in France,
and where several hundred girls and young women, whose only offence
against society had been to lose their natural protectors, were
subjected to all the rigors of the most benighted penal institutions.

She dared not warn this poor little novice that her commitment to The
Good Shepherd was equivalent to a sentence of nine years at hard
labor; that good conduct and industry would not earn a day from that
term, but that bad conduct, neglect, or inability to perform allotted
tasks would result not only in severe punishments but an extension of
imprisonment indefinitely, at the pleasure of those who reaped the
financial reward from the product of the sweat of the orphans.

She dared not notify this frail waif that these tasks of the needle
were measured by the ability of the most expert, and that the majority
of girls were obliged to work overtime in order to accomplish them;
that to many this was an impossibility, and to some death.

She dared not add to her recital of the money that might be earned and
saved up against the day of liberty that comparatively few were able
to perform the extra work necessary; that fines and charges of all
kinds were resorted to in order to reduce such earnings to minimum;
and that at the close of her nine years of hard labor for Le Bon
Pasteur the most she could expect was to be thrust into the street in
the clothes she wore, without a cent, without a friend, without a
shelter.

She dared not more than hint at the terrible alternatives placed
before these young women from their long isolation from the