Listen to the AudioBook: The Crucible by Mark Lee Luther

THE CRUCIBLE

I

The girl heard the key rasp in the lock and the door open, but she did not turn.

"When I enter the room, rise," directed an even voice.

The new inmate obeyed disdainfully. The superintendent, a middle-aged woman of precise bearing and crisp accent, took possession of the one chair, and flattened a note-book across an angular knee.

"Is Jean Fanshaw your full name?" she began.

"I'm called Jack."

"Jack!" The descending pencil paused disapprovingly in mid-air. "You were committed to the refuge as Jean."

"Everybody calls me Jack," persisted the girl shortly--"everybody."

"Does your mother?"

Her face clouded. "No," she admitted; "but my father did. He began it, and I like it. Why isn't it as good as Jean? Both come from John."

"It is not womanly," said Miss Blair, as one having authority. "Women of refinement don't adopt men's names."

"How about George Eliot?" Jean promptly countered. "And that other George--the French woman?"

The superintendent battled to mask her astonishment. Case-hardened by a dozen years' close contact with moral perverts, budding criminals, and the half-insane, she plumed herself that she was not easily taken off her guard. But the unexpected had befallen. The newcomer had given her a sensation, and moreover she knew it. Jean Fanshaw's dark eyes exulted insolently in her victory.

Miss Blair took formal refuge in her notes. "Birthplace?" she continued.

"Shawnee Springs."

"Age?"

"Seventeen, two months ago--September tenth."

The official jotted "American" under the heading of nationality, and said,--

"Where were your parents born?"

"Father hailed from the South--from Virginia." Her face lighted curiously. "His people once owned slaves."

"And your mother?"

The girl's interest in her ancestry flagged. "Pure Shawnee Springs." She flung off the characterization with scorn. "Pure, unadulterated Shawnee Springs."

But the superintendent was now on the alert for the unexpected. "I want plain answers," she admonished. "What has been your religious training?"

"Mixed. Father was an Episcopalian, I think, but he wasn't much of a churchgoer; he preferred the woods. Mother's a Baptist."

"And you?"

"I don't know what I am. I guess God isn't interested in my case."

The official retreated upon her final routine question.

"Education?"

"I was in my last year at high school when"--her cheek flamed--"when this happened."

Miss Blair construed the flush as a hopeful sign. "You may sit down, Jean," she said, indicating the narrow iron bed. "Let me see your knitting."

The girl handed over the task work which had made isolation doubly odious.

The superintendent pursed her thin lips.

"Have you never set up a stocking before?" she asked.

"No."

"Can you sew?"

"No."

"Or cook?"

"No."

"'No, Miss Blair,' would be more courteous. Have you

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