Babe has seen many classes graduate, among them her own. She's always known that Constance, unlike herself, was expected by the faculty, if not by the junkie headmistress, to be among the girls who leave Girls School at the completion of their normal course of studies--girls who go on to a good college, not having been too terribly corrupted by their secondary school experience, perhaps never having even visited the upper floors of Damnation. Babe calls herself a ward of the state of decay. Unlike Constance and a few of the other older girls, she has never been required by family pressures to pretend that she needs more time to decide what to do with the rest of her life. As a child she was secretly convinced that she was the victim of a hoax, and that somewhere within these walls and walks of stone and sod her imprisoned debtor parents were bewailing their separation from her. Now she looks around and can't even imagine their having feelings of concern, now that she knows where they are, and how congenial they find their liquor-soaked Southwestern domicile. Girls School is, among other things, a benevolent institution, and Constance tells her its definition of "orphan" has always been generous to the intellectually promising. "Some girls," she explains, "are acknowledged in the by-laws to be their own parents." Babe concedes the justice of this and indeed of everything that Constance says. She has a trusting nature and is even less inclined than Constance to question authority in matters relating to the by-laws, written or otherwise.