Miss Hattie is a generally soft-spoken woman with a pronounced southern-American accent who runs "Miss Hattie's Home For Girls", an orphanage.  However, that soft-spoken demeanor she has hides a much more unpleasant personality.  She has a short temper, and a tendency to treat the orphan girls in her charge very harshly...often punishing them for the slightest offenses by confining them in the "box of shame" (an overturned cardboard box with only a small flap cut open for a window).  She also requires the girls to clean things for her, and to sell cookies under a strict quota...for which she then keeps all of the profits.  Her only concern is her own reputation and her bottom line (how much she profits).  She cares nothing for the girls she supervises...even if she enjoys using her position to be unnecessarily discerning when adopting out the girls to potential new parents.