don't believe I ever have written anything about my first years at this Asylum. I am naturally a wandering person. Well, I was happy. I know I've said that before, but Miss Katherine says that's one of the few things you can say often.
I had a kitten, and a chicken which I killed by mistake. I took it to the pump to wash it, and it lost its breath and died. I still put flowers on the place where its grave was.
It was my first to die. I have lost many others since: a cat, and a rabbit, and a rooster called Napoleon because he was so strutty and domineering to his wives. I didn't put up anything to his grave. I didn't think the hens would like it. They just despised him.
Then there were the remains of Rebecca Baker. She was of rags, with button eyes and no teeth, just marks for them; but I loved her very much. I kept her as long as there was anything to hold her by; but after legs and arms went, and the back of her head got so thin from lack of sawdust that she had neuralgia all the time, I found her dead one morning, and buried her at once.
I loved Rebecca Baker: not for looks, but for comfort. I could talk to her without fear of her telling. She always knew how hungry I was, and how I hated oatmeal without sugar, and she never talked back.
During the years from three to nine I lived just mechanical, except on the inside. I got up to a bell and cleaned to a bell, and sat down to eat to a bell; rose to a bell, went to school to a bell, came out to a bell, worked to a bell, sewed to a bell, played to a bell, said my prayers to a bell, got in bed to a bell, and the next day and every day did the same thing over to the same old bell.
But when I marry my children's father there are to be no bells in the house we live in. Only buttons, with no particular time to be pressed.
We go to church to a bell, too; that, is to Sunday-school. We always go to St. John's Sunday-school—Episcopal. The man who left this place put it in his will that we had to, but we go to all the other churches. Episcopal the first Sunday, Methodist the second, Presbyterian the third, and Baptist the fourth, and when we get through we begin all over again.
We go to church like we do everything else, two by two. Start at a tap of that same old bell, and march along like wooden figures wound up; and the people who see us don't think we are really truly children or like theirs, except in shape inside. They think we just love our hideous clothes, and that we ought to be thankful for molasses and bread-and-milk every night in the week but one, and if we're not, we're wicked. Rich people think queer things.
Sundays at the Humane are terribly religious.
They begin early and last until after supper, and if anybody is sorry when Sunday is over, it's never been mentioned out loud. We have prayers and Bible-reading before breakfast every day, but on Sundays longer. Then we go to Sunday-school, where some of the children stare at us like we were foreign heathen who have come to get saved. Some nudge each other and laugh. But real many are nice and sweet, and I just love that little Minnie Dawes, who sits in front of me. She wears the prettiest hats in Yorkburg, and I get lots of ideas from them. I trim hats in my mind all the time Miss Sallie is talking—- Miss Sallie is our teacher.
She is a good lady, Miss Sallie Ray is. Her chief occupation is religion, and as for going to church, it's the true joy of her life. She's in love with Mr. Benson, the Superintendent, and very regular at all the services. So is he.
But for teaching children Miss Sallie wasn't meant. She really wasn't. She never surely knows the lesson herself, and it was such fun asking her all sorts of questions just to see her flounder round for answers that I used to pretend I wanted to know a lot of things I didn't. But I don't do that now. It was like punching a lame cat to see it hop, and I stopped.
She don't ask me anything, either. Never has since the day Mr. Benson came in our class and asked for a little review, and Martha Cary made trouble, of course.
Miss Sallie was so red and excited by Mr. Benson sitting there beside her that she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't, or she wouldn't have asked me questions, knowing I never say the things I ought. But after a minute she did ask me, fanning just as hard as she could. It was in January.
"Now, Mary Cary, tell us something of the people we have been studying about this winter," she said, "Mention something of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Peter and Paul. Who was Abraham?"
"Abraham was a coward," I said.
"A what?" And her voice was a little shriek. "A what?"
"A coward. He was! He passed his wife off for his sister, fearing trouble for himself, and not thinking of consequences for her."
"That will do," she said, and she fanned harder than ever, and looked real frightened at Mr. Benson, who was blowing his nose. "Susie Rice, who was Jacob?"
Susie didn't know. Nobody knew, so I spoke again.
"Jacob was a rascal. He deceived his father and stole from his brother. But he prospered and repented, and died prominent."
Mr. Benson got up and said he believed his nose was bleeding, and went out quick, and since then Miss Sallie has never asked me a single question. Not one.
Now I wonder what made Martha speak out like that? Abraham and Jacob were good men who did some bad things, but generally only their goodness is mentioned. While you're living it's apt to be the other way.
But I'm glad the bad is overlooked in time. Maybe that is what God will do with everybody. He'll wipe out all the wrongness and meanness, and see through it to the good. I hope that's the way it's going to be, for that's my only chance.
Since Miss Sallie stopped asking me anything, and I her, I have a lovely time in my mind taking things off the other children and putting them on the Orphans. There's Margaret Evans. In the winter she's always blue and frozen, and I'd give her that Mallory child's velvet coat and gray muff and tippet, and put Margaret's blue cape and calico dress on her.
Poor little Margaret! She's so humble and thankful she gets even less than the rest, it looks like, though I suppose in clothes she has the same allowance, and the difference, maybe, is in herself.
Some people are born to be stepped on, and of steppers there are always a-plenty.
After Sunday-school we walk to the church we're going to, two by two, just alike and all in blue. The minister always mentions us in his prayers, except at St. John's, the prayer-book not providing for Orphans in particular.
When church is over we march home and have dinner, and after dinner we study the lesson for next Sunday and practise hymns until time for the afternoon service. That begins at four, and some of the town ministers preach or talk, generally preach, long and wearisome.
The Episcopal minister gets through in a hurry. We love to have him. He talks so fast we don't half understand, and before we know it he's got his hand up and we hear him saying: "And now to the Father and to the Son—." And the rest is mumbled, but we know he's through and is glad of it, and so are we.
The Presbyterian Sunday is the longest and solemnest, and I always write a new story in my mind when Dr. Moffett preaches. He is very learned, and knows Hebrew and Latin and Greek, but not much about little girls.
Poor Mrs Blamire; she tries to keep awake, but she can't do it; and after the first five minutes she puffs away just as regular as if she were wound up. Once I shut my eyes and tried to puff like her, but I forgot to be careful, and did it so loud the girls came near getting in trouble. Dr. Moffett is deaf, and didn't hear. Miss Bray heard.
But the Baptist minister don't let you sleep on his Sunday. He used to try to make the girls come up and profess, but now he don't ask even that. Just sit where you are and hold up your hand, and when you join the church—any church will answer—you are saved. I don't understand it.
We all like the Methodist minister. I don't think he knows many dead languages. He don't have much time to study, being so busy helping people; but he knows how to talk to us children, and he always makes me wish I wasn't so bad. He always does, and the Mary part of me just rises right up on his Sunday, and Martha is ashamed of herself. He believes in getting better by the love way. So do I.
Miss Katherine is going away next week to stay two months. Going to her army brother's first, and then to the California brother, who's North somewhere. And from the time she told me I've felt like Robinson Crusoe's daughter would have felt, if he'd had one, and gone off and left her on that desert island.
I don't know what we're going to do when she goes away. I could shed gallons of tears, only I don't like tears, and then, too, she might see me. I want her to think I'm glad she's going, for she needs a change. But, oh, the difference her going will make!
I will be nothing but Martha. I know it. Nothing but Martha until she comes back. The Mary part of me is so sick at the thought she hasn't any backbone, and Martha is showing signs already.
And that shows I'm just nothing, for Miss Katherine has taught us, without exactly telling, how we can't do what we ought by wanting. We've got to work. In plain words, its watch and pray, and with me it's the watching that's most important. If I'm not on the lookout, and don't nab Martha right away, praying don't have any effect. I'm a natural pray-er, but on watching I'm poor.
I couldn't make any one understand what Miss Katherine has done for us since she's been here. Some words don't tell things. The nursing when we're sick is only a part, and though she's fixed up one of the rooms just like a hospital-room, with everything so white and clean and sweet in it that it's real joy to be sick, we're not sick often.
It's the keeping us well that's kept her so busy. She's explained so many things to us we didn't know before, she's almost made me like my body. I didn't use to. Not a bit.
It's such a nuisance, and needs so much attention to keep it going right. So often it was freezing cold, or blazing hot, or hungry, and had to be dressed in such ugly clothes that I was ashamed of it. And if ever I could have hung it up in the closet or put it away in a bureau-drawer, I would have done it while I went out and had a good time. But I couldn't do it. I had to take it everywhere I went, and until Miss Katherine came I had mighty little use for it.
But since she's been here the girls are much cleaner, and we don't mind so much not having the things to eat that we like. That is, not quite so much. But almost. When you're downright hungry for the taste of things, it don't satisfy to say to yourself "You don't really need it. Be quiet." And being made of flesh and blood, most of us would rather eat the things we want to than the things we ought to.
But the dining-room is much nicer. We have flowers on the table, and the cooking is better, though we still have prunes.
I loathe prunes.
knew when Miss Katherine left I'd be nothing but Martha. That's what I've been—Martha.
She hadn't been gone two days when Mary gave up, and as prompt as possible Martha invented trouble.
It was this way. In the summer we have much more time than in the winter, and the children kept coming to me asking me to make up something, and all of a sudden a play came in my mind. I just love acting. The play was to be the marriage of Dr. Rudd and Miss Bray.
You see, Miss Bray is dead in love with Dr. Rudd—really addled about him. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick she is so solicitous and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed to me if we could just think him into marrying her, it would be the best work we'd ever done, and I thought it was worth trying.
They say if you just think and think and think about a thing you can make somebody else think about it, too. And not liking Dr. Rudd, we didn't mind thinking her on him, and so we began. Every day we'd meet for an hour and think together, and each one promised to think single, and in between times we got ready.
Becky Drake says love goes hard late in life, and sometimes touches the brain. Maybe that accounts for Miss Bray.
She is fifty-three years old, and all frazzled out and done up with adjuncts. But Dr. Rudd, being a man with not even usual sense, and awful conceited, don't see what we see, and swallows easy. Men are funny—funny as some women.
I don't think he's ever thought of courting Miss Bray. But she's thought of it, and for once we truly tried to help her.
Well, we got ready, beginning two days after Miss Katherine left, and the play came off Friday night, the third of July. In consequence of that play I have been in a retreat, and on the Fourth of July I made a New-Year resolution.
I resolved I would do those things I should not do, and leave undone the things I should. I would not disappoint Miss Bray. She looked for things in me to worry her. She should find them.
Well, I was in that top-story summer-resort for ten days. Put there for reflection. I reflected. And on the difference between Miss Katherine and Miss Bray.
But the play was a corker; it certainly was. We chose Friday night because Miss Jones always takes tea with her aunt that night, and Miss Bray goes to choir practising. I wish everybody could hear her sing! Gabriel ought to engage her to wake the dead, only they'd want to die again.
Dr. Rudd is in the choir, and she just lives on having Friday nights to look forward to.
The ceremony took place in the basement-room where we play in bad weather. It's across from the dining-room, the kitchen being between, and it's a right nice place to march in, being long and narrow.
I was the preacher, and Prudence Arch and Nita Polley, Emma Clark and Margaret Witherspoon were the bridesmaids.
Lizzie Wyatt was the bride, and Katie Freeman, who is the tallest girl in the house, though only fourteen, was the groom.
Katie is so thin she would do as well for one thing in this life as another, so we made her Dr. Rudd.
We didn't have but two men. Miss Webb says they're really not necessary at weddings, except the groom and the minister. Nobody notices them, and, besides, we couldn't get the pants.
I was an Episcopal minister, so I wouldn't need any. Mrs. Blamire's raincoat was the gown, and I cut up an old petticoat into strips, and made bands to go down the front and around my neck. Loulie Prentiss painted some crosses and marks on them with gilt, so as to make me look like a Bishop. I did. A little cent one.
There wasn't any trouble about my costume, because I could soap my hair and make it lie flat, and put on the robe, and there I was. But how to get a pair of pants for Katie Freeman was a puzzle.
Nothing male lives in the Humane. Not even a billy-goat. We couldn't borrow pants, knowing it wouldn't be safe; and what to do I couldn't guess.
Well, the day came, and, still wondering where those pants were to come from, I went out in the yard where a man was painting a window-shutter that had blown off a back window. Right before my eyes was the woodhouse door wide open, and something said to me:
"Walk in."
I walked in; and there in a corner on a woodpile was a real nice pair of pants, and a collar and cravat, and a coat and a tin lunch-bucket, which had been eaten—the lunch had. And when I saw those pants I knew Katie Freeman was fixed.
They belonged to the man who was painting the shutter.
It was an awful hot day, and he had taken them off in the woodhouse and put on his overalls, and when he wasn't looking I slipped out with them, and went up to Miss Bray's room. She was down-stairs talking to Miss Jones, and I hid them under the mattress of her bed.
I knew when she found they were missing she'd turn to me to know where they were. No matter what went wrong, from the cat having kittens or the chimney smoking, she looked to me as the cause. And if there was to be any searching, No. 4—I sleep in No. 4 when Miss Katherine is away—would be the first thing searched. So I put them under her bed.
I wish Miss Katherine could have seen that man about six o'clock, when the time came for him to go home. She would have laughed, too. She couldn't have helped it.
He is young, and Bermuda Ray says he is in love with Callie Payne, who lives just down the street. He has to pass her house going home, and I guess that's the reason he wore his good clothes and took them off so carefully. But whether that was it or not, he was the rippenest, maddest man I ever saw in my life when he went to put on his pants and there were none to put.
I almost rolled off the porch up-stairs, where I was watching. I never did know before how much a man thinks of his pants.
He soon had Miss Bray and Miss Jones and a lot of the girls out in the yard, and everybody was talking at once; and then I heard him say:
"But I tell you, Miss Bray, I put 'em here, right on this woodpile. And where are they? You run this place, and you are responsible for—"
"Not for pants." And Miss Bray's voice was so shrill it sounded like a broken whistle. "I'm responsible for no man's pants. When a man can't take care of his pants, he shouldn't have them. Besides, you shouldn't have left yours in the woodhouse when working in a Female Orphan Asylum." And she glared so at him that the poor male thing withered, and blushed real beautiful.
He's a pretty young man, and I felt sorry for him when Miss Bray snapped so. I certainly did.
"My overalls are my working-pants," he said, real meek-like, and his voice was trembling so I thought he was going to cry. "It's very strange that in a place like this a man's clothes are not safe. I thought—"
"Well, you had no business thinking. Next time keep your pants on." And Miss Bray, who's good on a bluff, pretended like she had been truly injured, and the poor little painter sat down.
Presently his face changed, as if a thought had come into his mind from a long way off, and he said, in another kind of voice:
"I beg your pardon, Miss Bray. I believe I know who done it. It's a friend of mine who tries to be funny every now and then, and calls it joking. I'll choke his liver out of him!" And he settled himself on the woodpile to wait until dark before he went home.
If anybody thinks that wedding was slumpy, they think wrong. It was thrilly. When the bride and groom and the bridesmaids came in, all the girls were standing in rows on either side of the walk, making an aisle in between, and they sang a wedding-song I had invented from my heart.
It was to the Lohengrin tune, which is a little wobbly for words, but they got them in all right, keeping time with their hands. These are the words:
And such singing! We'd been practising in the back part of the yard, and humming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn't let out until that night. That night we let go.
There's nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was the minister and stood on a box which was shaky, I sang, too. I led.
The bride didn't think it was modest to hold up her head, and she was the only silent one. But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and it sounded like the revivals at the Methodist church. It was grand.
And that bride! She was Miss Bray. A graven image of her couldn't have been more like her.
She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just like Miss Bray's. Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray's mole.
And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that little nervous sniffle with her nose, like Miss Bray makes when she's excited, that once I had to wink at her to stop.
The groom didn't look like Dr. Rudd. But she wore men's clothes, and that's the only way you'd know some men were men, and almost anything will do for a groom. Nobody noticed him.
We were getting on just grand, and I was marrying away, telling them what they must do and what they mustn't. Particularly that they mustn't get mad and leave each other, for Yorkburg was very old-fashioned and didn't like changes, and would rather stick to its mistakes than go back on its word. And then I turned to the bride.
"Miss Bray," I said, "have you told this man you are marrying that you are two-faced and underhand, and can't be trusted to tell the truth? Have you told him that nobody loves you, and that for years you have tried to pass for a lamb, when you are an old sheep? And does he know that though you're a good manager on little and are not lazy, that your temper's been ruined by economizing, and that at times, if you were dead, there'd be no place for you? Peter wouldn't pass you, and the devil wouldn't stand you. And does he know he's buying a pig in a bag, and that the best wedding present he could give you would be a set of new teeth? And will you promise to stop pink powder and clean your finger-nails every day? And—"
But I got no further, for something made me look up, and there, standing in the door, was the real Miss Bray.
All I said was—"Let us pray!"
eautiful gloriousness! Miss Katherine has come back!
What a different place some people can make the same place!
Yesterday there wasn't an interesting thing in Yorkburg. Nothing but dust and shabby old houses and poky people who knew nothing to talk about, and to-day—oh, to-day it's dear! I love it!
You see, after that wedding everything went wrong. The girls said it wasn't fair for me to be punished so much more than the rest, and they wanted to tell the Board about it; but for once I agreed with Miss Bray.
"I did it. I made it up and fixed everything, and you all just agreed," I said. "And if anybody has to pay, I'm the one to do it." And I paid all right. Paid to the full. But it's over now, and I'm not going to think about it any more. When a thing is over, that should be the end of it, Miss Katherine says, and with me what she says goes.
Miss Bray is away. If some of her relations liked her well enough to have her stay a few months with them, she could get leave of absence; but she's never been known to stay but four weeks. She's gone to visit her sister somewhere in Fauquier County. Her sister's husband always leaves home for his health when she arrives, and Miss Bray says she thinks it's so queer he has the same kind of spells at the same time every year.
But now Miss Katherine's back, nothing matters. Nothing!
Yesterday I was just a squirrel in a cage. All day long I was saying: "Well, Squirrel, turn your little wheel. That's all you can do; turn your little wheel." And inside I was turning as hard and fast as a sure-enough squirrel turns; but outside I was just mechanical.
I wonder sometimes I don't blaze up right before people's eyes. I'm so often on fire—that is, my mind and heart are—that I think at times my body will surely catch. Thus far it hasn't, but if I don't go somewhere, see something, do something different, it's apt to, and the doctors won't have a name for the new kind of inflammation.
I'm going to die after a while, and I'm so afraid I will do it before I travel some that if I were a boy child I'd go anyhow. But I can't go. That is, not yet.
Miss Katherine has been travelling for two months up North. She's been with her brother and his wife. The wife is sick, or she thinks she is, which Miss Katherine says is a hard disease to cure, and she's kept them moving from place to place.
They wanted Miss Katherine to go to Europe with them this fall, but she isn't going. She's been twice, and says she don't want to go. But I don't believe it's that. I believe it's something else.
But sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof! I'm going to enjoy her staying, and already everything seems different.
You see, Miss Katherine lives here just for love, and when you do things for love you do them differently from the way you do them for money.
We are just Charity children, some not knowing who they are, I being one of that kind; but she never treats us as if she thinks of that. If we were relations she liked, she couldn't be kinder or nicer, and when a child is in trouble Miss Katherine is the one that's gone to at once.
She is never too tired or too busy to listen, but she's awful firm; and there's no nonsense or sullenness or shamming where she is. She can see through the insides of your soul, up to the top and down to the tip, and in front of her eyes you are just your plain self. Only that, and nothing more. They are gray, her eyes are, with a dark rim around the gray part; and she has the longest black lashes I ever saw. Her hair is black, too, like an Eastern Princess and in the morning when she puts her cap on and her nurse's white dress, which she wears when on duty, I call her to myself, "My Lady of the Lovely Heart," and I could kneel down and say my prayers to her.
I don't, though, for she would tell me pretty quick to get up. She doesn't like things like that, and, of course, it would look queer.
But I don't know anybody who isn't queer about something. Either stupid queer, or silly queer, or smart queer, or beautiful queer, or religious queer, or selfish queer, or some other kind.
Miss Bray is the Queen of Queers.
But Miss Katherine is queer, too. If she wasn't, she wouldn't stay at this Orphan Asylum, just to help us children, and doing it as cheerfully as if she were happier here than she would be anywhere else. If her staying isn't queerness, beautiful queerness, what is it?
I don't understand it, and I don't believe I ever will understand how any one who can get ice-cream will take prunes.
But Miss Katherine has got a way of seeing the funny side of things, and sometimes I can't tell whether she minds prunes and pruny things or not.
I'm sure she does, but she says, when you can't change a thing, don't let it change you, and that an inward disposition is hard on other people.
I don't know what that means, but I think it's the same as saying there's no use in always chewing the rag. Martha is right much inclined to be a chewer.
Miss Webb is, too. She is Miss Katherine's best friend, and I just love to hear her talk.
She always comes once a week, often twice, to spend the evening at the Asylum with Miss Katherine, and sometimes when they think I'm asleep, I'm not. I'd be a nuisance if I kept popping up and saying, "I'm not asleep, speak low." So when I can't, really can't, sleep, though I do try, I hear them talking, and the things Miss Webb says are a great relief to my feelings.
She doesn't come to supper, orphan-asylum suppers being refreshments to stay from, not come to, but nearly always they make something on a chafing-dish. Something that's good, painful good.
Miss Webb says Miss Katherine's stomach has some rights, which is true; and when they begin to cook, I just sleep away, breathing regular and easy, so they won't know I am awake, for fear they might think I am not asleep on purpose.
But I have to hold on to the bed and stuff my ears and nose so as not to hear and smell, for I am that hungry I could eat horse if it had Worcestershire sauce on it. And that is what they put in their things, which shows that in eating, even, Miss Katherine preaches sense and practises taste.
Miss Webb just laughs at theories, and brings all sorts of good things with her. She says doctors have wronged more stomachs than they've ever righted by all this dieting business, and, while there's sense in some of it, there's more nonsense; and as for her, she don't believe in it. I don't know anything about it; but I don't, either.
They always save me some of whatever they make, which I get the next day. But if I could rise out of bed and eat as much as I want out of that chafing-dish, there would be a funeral Miss Bray would like to attend. The corpse would be Mary Cary, died Martha.
There is a screen at the foot of my bed, put there so the light won't bother me and so I won't be seen. And, thinking I am asleep, Miss Katherine and Miss Webb talk on as if I were dead; and it's very interesting the things they talk about.
Of course, Miss Webb came over last night, and, after talking about two hours, she said: "Oh, I forgot to tell you. Lizzie Lane is going to marry Bob Rogers, and right away. I don't suppose you've heard."
"Yes, I have; Lizzie wrote me." And Miss Katherine took the hair-pins out of her hair and let it fall down her back. "What made her change her mind? What is she marrying him for?"
"How do I know?" And Miss Webb tasted the chocolate to see if it was sweet enough.
"How does anybody know what a man is married for? In most cases you can't risk a guess. Lizzie is a woman, therefore 'hath reason or unreason for her act.'"
"How did it happen? What made her change her mind?" and Miss Katherine threw her hair-pins on the bureau and stooped down to get her slippers. "How does Lizzie explain it?"
"She says she was so sleepy she doesn't remember whether she said yes or no. But Bob remembers, and the wedding is to be week after next. He's courted her three times a year for seven years; but since he's been living North he hasn't even written to her, and she didn't know he was in town until he came up that night to see her.
"He stayed until after one o'clock, and didn't mention marriage. But as he got up to go he told her his house was going to send him on a six months' trip to Japan. If she would marry him and go, say so. If not, say that, too, but for the last time. Lizzie said she'd go."
Miss Katherine fastened her kimono, put her feet up on the chair in front of her, and clasped her hands behind her head.
"I don't wonder at the unhappy marriages," she said. "The queer part is there aren't more of them. Why did Bob wait eight years to talk to Lizzie like this? Why is it a man has so little understanding of a woman?"
"Why? Because he's a Man. The Lord made him, and there must be some reason for him; but even the Lord must sometimes get worn out at his dumbness. However—"
She stopped, for the chocolate was boiling over; then she began to sing:
And she sang it so many times that I went to sleep and dreamed the dream I love most.
I see hundreds and hundreds of little creatures (they are the Mary part of little children), and they are afraid and shivering and standing about, not knowing where to go or what to do. And then Miss Katherine is in the midst of them, smiling and beckoning, and they follow and follow, and wings come out. Just tiny ones at first, and then larger and larger, and presently they fly all around her, and she points the way, smiling and cheering.
And then they rise higher and higher, and off they go, and she is alone. Tired out but glad, because she taught them how to use their wings.
his is Sunday, and we have done all the usual Sunday things. There won't be another for seven days. For that we give thanks in our hearts, but not out loud.
This was Presbyterian Sunday. Miss Bray is a Presbyterian.
It is a solemn thing to be a Presbyterian, and easy for the mind, too. Everything is fixed, and there is no unfixing. You are saved or you are not saved, and you will never know which it is until after you are dead and find out. Miss Bray believes she is saved, and she takes liberties. She also thinks everything is as God ordered it, and she believes God ordered poor Mrs. Craddock to die—that is, took her away. I don't. I think it was that last baby.
She had had twelve, and the thirteenth just wore her out at the thought. There being nobody to do anything for her, she got up and cooked breakfast in her stocking feet when the baby was only a week old, and that night she had the influenza, and the next pneumonia. On the sixth day she was dead, and so was the baby. They forgot to feed it.
I don't believe God ever took any mothers away intentional. He never would have made them so necessary if He had meant to take them away when they were most needed. When they go I believe He is sorry.
I don't know how to explain it. Nobody does, though a lot try. But I know He sees it bigger than we do, and maybe He is working at something that isn't finished yet.
Minnie Peters is real sick. Miss Katherine has put her in the hospital-room, and is staying in there with her.
I am all alone by myself to-night. I don't like aloneness at night. It makes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherine says is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseases put together.
She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often different from the way other people feel about it. And when you don't agree with people, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don't agree with you. I believe that's true. Not being by nature much of an agree-er, and having feelings I hope others don't, I would be a walking argument if Miss Katherine hadn't stopped me and explained some things I didn't realize before.
Last night, being by myself, and not being able to go to sleep, I wrote a piece of poetry.
Miss Katherine says it's hard to forgive people who think they write poetry, so I won't show her this. But it does relieve you to write down a lot of woozy nothing that is somehow like you feel. This is the poem—I mean the verses:
I hope Minnie isn't going to be sick long. She is the first girl to be really ill since Miss Katherine came. It makes you feel so queer in the throat to know somebody is truly sick.
A lot of the girls have been sick a little with colds and small and unserious diseases in the past year. But Miss Katherine says it's her business to keep us well, not just get us well after we're sick, and she's certainly done it. We've been weller than we ever were in our lives, and no medicine taken. Just plain common-sense regulations.
I wonder what's the matter with Minnie? The doctor hasn't said, but Miss Katherine is uneasy, and she won't let anybody come in the room. She hasn't been out herself since yesterday.
My, but we've had a time lately!
We've been fumigated and sterilized and fertilized so much that we are better prepared for the happy-land than we ever were before. But the danger of anybody going to it right away is over.
Minnie Peters has had scarlet fever, and the commotion made her real famous.
Miss Katherine knew it from the first, but Dr. Rudd wouldn't believe it until he had to, and Yorkburg got so excited it hasn't talked of anything else for weeks.
Minnie was awful ill. Two days and two nights they didn't think she would live, and for three weeks Miss Katherine didn't leave the room. If it hadn't been for her Minnie would be dead.
Miss Katherine's room has been closed since they first found out it was really scarlet fever Minnie had, and I have been in No. 4 again. She is going away to spend a week with Miss Webb. Going to-morrow.
I am so glad she is going. All of us are glad, for she has had to do something which shows whether you are a Christ-kind Christian or the usual kind, and she is tired out. She won't admit it, though, and laughs and kisses her hand over the banister, which is all the closer we have seen her yet.
Miss Bray was scared to death. She didn't offer to share the nursing, but she made excuses a-plenty for not doing it. Miss Bray is a church Christian. You couldn't make her miss going to church. She thinks she'd have bad luck if she did.
his is a busy time of the year, and things are moving. I'm in business. The Apple and Entertainment business.
The reason I went in business was to make money, and the money was to buy Christmas presents with.
I didn't have a cent. Not one. Christmas was coming. Money wasn't. And what's the use of Christmas if you can't give something to somebody?
Religion is the only thing I know of that you can get without money and without price, and even that you can't keep without both. Not being suitable to the season, I couldn't give that away, even if I had it to spare, and wondering what to do almost made me sick.
I thought and thought until my brain curdled. I looked over everything I had to see if there was a thing I could sell. There wasn't. I couldn't tell Miss Katherine, knowing she'd fix up some way to give me some and pretend I was earning it; and then, one day, when she was out, I locked myself in her room, and Martha gave Mary such a spanking talk that Mary moved.
Everything Martha had suggested before, Mary had some excuse for not doing. Mary is lazy at times, and, as for pride, she's full of it. Martha generally gives the trouble, but Mary needs plain truth every now and then, and that day she got it. When the talk was over, there was a plan settled on, and the plan was this.
Each day in December we have an apple for dinner. Mr. Riley sends us several barrels every winter, and, as they won't keep, we have one apiece until they're gone.
We don't have to eat them at the table, and when Martha told Mary you could do anything you wanted if you wanted to hard enough—except raise the dead, of course—the idea came that I could sell my apple. And right away came the thought of the boy I could sell it to. John Maxwell is his name.
He goes to our Sunday-school and is fifteen, and croaks like a bull-frog. Ugly? Pug-dog ugly; but he's awful nice, and for a boy has real much sense.
His father owns the shoe-factory, and has plenty of money. I know, for he told me he had five cents every day to get something for lunch, and fifty cents a week to do anything he wants with. His mother gives it to him.
Well, the next Sunday he came over to talk, like he always does after Sunday-school is out, and I said, real quick, Mary giving signs of silliness:
"I'm in business. Did you know it?"
"No," he said. "What kind? Want a partner?"
"I don't. I want customers. I'm in the Apple business. I have an apple every day. It's for sale. Want to buy it?"
"What's the price?" Then he laughed. "I'm from New Jersey. What's it worth?"
"It's worth a cent. As you're from New Jersey, I charge you two. Take it?"
"I do." And he started to hand the money out.
But I told him I didn't want pay in advance. And then we talked over how the apple could be put where he could get it, and the money where I could. We decided on a certain hole in the Asylum fence John knew about, and every evening that week I put my apple there and found his two pennies. On Saturday night I had fourteen cents. Wasn't that grand? Fourteen cents!
But the next Sunday there came near being trouble. Roper Gordon—he's John Maxwell's cousin—had heard about the apple selling. He told me I wasn't charging enough, and that he'd pay three cents for it.
"I'll be dogged if you will," said John. "I'm cornering that apple, and I'll meet you. I'll give four."
"All right," I said. "I'm in business to make money. I'm not charging for worth, but for want. The one who wants it most will pay most. It can go at four."
"No, it can't!" said Roper. His father is rich, too. He's the Vice-President of the Factory, and Roper puts on lots of airs. He thinks money can do anything.
"I'll give five. Apples in small lots come high, and selected ones higher. John is a close buyer, and isn't toting square."
"That's a lie!" said John, and he lit out with his right arm and gave Roper such a blow that my heart popped right out on my tongue and sat there. Scared? I was weak as a dead cat.
But I grabbed John and pulled him behind me before Roper could hit back, and then in some way they got outside, and I heard afterward John beat Roper to a jelly.
I don't blame him. If any one were to say I wasn't square, I'd fight, too.
When you don't fight, it's because what is said is true, and you're afraid it will be found out. And a coward. Good Lord!
Anyhow, after that I got five cents a day for my apple. John put six cents in, raising Roper, he said, but I wouldn't keep but five.
"I can't," I said. "I hate my conscience, for even in business it pokes itself in. But five cents is all I can take."
"Which shows you're new in business, or you'd take the other fellow's skin if he had to have what you've got. And I'm bound to have that apple. Bound to!" And he dug the toe of his shoe so deep in the dirt he could have put his foot in. We were down at the fence, where I went to tell him he mustn't leave but five cents any more.
The Apple business was much easier than the Entertainment business; but I enjoyed both. Making money is exciting. I guess that's why men love to make it.
I made in all $2.34. One dollar and fifty cents on entertaining, and eighty-four cents on apples.
The entertaining was this way. Mrs. Dick Moon is twin to the lady who lived in a shoe. Her house isn't far from the Asylum, and I like her real much; but she isn't good on management. Everything on the place just runs over everything else, and nothing is ever ready on time.
She has money—that is, her husband has, which Miss Katherine says isn't always the same thing. And she has servants and a graphophone and a pianola, but she doesn't really seem to have anything but children, and they are everywhere.
They are the sprawly kind that lie on their stomachs and kick their heels, and get under your feet and on your back. And their mouths always have molasses or sugar in the corners, and their noses have colds, and their hands are that sticky they leave a print on everything they touch.
But they aren't mean-bad, just bad because they don't know what to do, and they beg me to stay and play with them when Miss Jones sends me over with a message. Sometimes I do, and the day Martha gave Mary such a rasping about making money, another thought came besides the apples, and I went that afternoon to see Mrs. Moon.
"Mrs. Moon," I said, "the children have colds and can't go out. If Miss Bray will let me, would you like me to come over and entertain them during our play-hour? It's from half-past four to half-past five. I'll come every day from now until Christmas, and I charge twenty-five cents a week for it."
I knew my face was rambler red. I hated to mention money, but I hated worse not to have any to buy Miss Katherine a present with. If she thought twenty-five cents a week too high she could say so. But she didn't.
"Mercy, Mary Cary!" she said, "do you mean it? Would I like you to come? Would I? I wish I could buy you!" And she threw her arms around me and kissed me so funny I thought she was going to cry.
"Of course I want you," she went on, after wiping her nose. She had a cold, too. "You can manage the children better than I, and if you knew what one quiet hour a day meant to the mother of seven, all under twelve, you'd charge more than you're doing. I'll see Miss Bray to-morrow."
She saw, and Miss Bray let me come.
Mrs. Moon is a member of the Board, and Mr. Moon is rich. Miss Bray never sleeps in waking time.
Well, when Mrs. Moon paid me for the first week, she gave me fifty cents instead of twenty-five, and I wouldn't take it.
"But you've earned it," she said, putting it back in my hand, and giving it a little pat—a little love pat. "You didn't say you were coming on Sundays, and you came. Sunday is the worst day of all. I nearly go crazy on Sunday. No, child, don't think you're getting too much. One doctor's visit would be two dollars, and the prescription forty cents, anyhow. The children would be on the bed, and my head splitting, and Mammy as much good in keeping them quiet as a cackling hen. I feel like I'm cheating in only paying fifty cents. Each nap was worth that. I wish I could engage you by the year!" And she gave me such a squeeze I almost lost my breath.
But they are funny, those Moon children. Sarah Sue is the oldest, and nobody ever knows what Sarah Sue is going to say.
Yesterday I made them tell me what they were going to buy for their mother's and father's Christmas presents, and the things they said were queer. As queer as the presents some grown people give each other.
"I'm going to give father a set of tools," said Bobbie. "I saw 'em in Mr. Blakey's window, and they'll cut all right. They cost eighty-five cents."
"What are you going to give your father tools for?" I asked. "He's not a boy."
"But I am." And Bobbie jumped over a chair on Billy's back. "You said yourself you ought always to give a person a thing you'd like to have, and I'd like those tools. They're the bulliest set in Yorkburg. I'm going to give mother a little yellow duck. That's at Mr. Blakey's, too."
"It don't cost but five cents," said Sarah Sue, and she looked at Bobbie as if he were not even the dust of the earth. Then she handed me her list.
"But, Sarah Sue," I said, after I'd read it, "you've got seventy-five cents down here for your mother and only fifty for your father. Do you think it's right to make a difference?"
"Yes, I do." And Sarah Sue's big brown eyes were as serious as if 'twere funeral flowers she was selecting. "You see, it's this way. I love them both seventy-five cents' worth, but I don't think I ought to give them the same. Father is just my father by marriage, but Mother's my mother by bornation. I think mothers ought always to have the most."
I think so, too.