Title: Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha"
Author: Bosher, Kate Langley, 1865-1932
Language: English
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MARY CARY
_"FREQUENTLY MARTHA"_

BY
Kate Langley Bosher

FRONTISPIECE BY
FRANCES ROGERS

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Published By Arrangement With Harper & Brothers



COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



TO
VIRGINIA



CONTENTS

CHAP.                                                               PAGE
   I.  AN UNTHANKFUL ORPHAN                                            1
  II.  THE COMING OF MISS KATHERINE                                   14
 III.  MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA                                        27
  IV.  THE STEPPED-ON AND THE STEPPERS                                39
   V.  "HERE COMES THE BRIDE!"                                        50
  VI.  "MY LADY OF THE LOVELY HEART"                                  61
 VII.  "STERILIZED AND FERTILIZED"                                    70
VIII.  MARY CARY'S BUSINESS                                           75
  IX.  LOVE IS BEST                                                   85
   X.  THE REAGAN BALL                                                97
  XI.  FINDING OUT                                                   103
 XII.  A TRUE MIRACLE                                                120
XIII.  HIS COMING                                                    133
 XIV.  THE HURT OF HAPPINESS                                         141
  XV.  A REAL WEDDING                                                155



MARY CARY



I

AN UNTHANKFUL ORPHAN


My name is Mary Cary. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum. You
may think nothing happens in an Orphan Asylum. It does. The orphans are
sure enough children, and real much like the kind that have Mothers and
Fathers; but though they don't give parties or wear truly Paris clothes,
things happen, and that's why I am going to write this story.

To-day I was kept in. Yesterday, too. I don't mind, for I would rather
watch the lightning up here than be down in the basement with the
others. There are days when I love thunder and lightning. I can't flash
and crash, being just Mary Cary; but I'd like to, and when it is done
for me it is a relief to my feelings.

The reason I was kept in was this. Yesterday Mr. Gaffney, the one with
a sunk eye and cold in his head perpetual, came to talk to us for the
benefit of our characters. He thinks it's his duty, and, just naturally
loving to talk, he wears us out once a week anyhow. Yesterday, not
agreeing with what he said, I wouldn't pretend I did, and I was punished
prompt, of course.

I don't care for duty-doers, and I tried not to listen to him; but
tiresome talk is hard not to hear--it makes you so mad. Hear him I did,
and when, after he had ambled on until I thought he really was
castor-oil and I had swallowed him, he blew his nose and said:

"You have much, my children, to be thankful for, and for everything you
should be thankful. Are you? If so, stand up. Rise, and stand upon your
feet."

I didn't rise. All the others did--stood on their feet, just like he
asked. None tried their heads. I was the only one that sat, and when he
saw me, his sunk eye almost rolled out, and his good eye stared at me in
such astonishment that I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it, I truly
couldn't.

I'm not thankful for everything, and that's why I didn't stand up. Can
you be thankful for toothache, or stomachache, or any kind of ache? You
cannot. And not meant to be, either.

The room got awful still, and then presently he said:

"Mary Cary"--his voice was worse than his eye--"Mary Cary, do you mean
to say you have not a thankful heart?" And he pointed his finger at me
like I was the Jezebel lady come to life.

I didn't answer, thinking it safer, and he asked again:

"Do I understand, Mary Cary"--and by this time he was real
red-in-the-face mad--"do I understand you are not thankful for all that
comes to you? Do I understand aright?"

"Yes, sir, you understand right," I said, getting up this time. "I am
not thankful for everything in my life. I'd be much thankfuller to have
a Mother and Father on earth than to have them in heaven. And there are
a great many other things I would like different." And down I sat, and
was kept in for telling the truth.

Miss Bray says it was for impertinence (Miss Bray is the Head Chief of
this Institution), but I didn't mean to be impertinent. I truly didn't.
Speaking facts is apt to make trouble, though--also writing them. To-day
Miss Bray kept me in for putting something on the blackboard I forgot to
rub out. I wrote it just for my own relief, not thinking about anybody
else seeing it. What I wrote was this:

    "Some people are crazy all the time;
    All people are crazy sometimes."

That's why I'm up in the punishment-room to-day, and it only proves that
what I wrote is right. It's crazy to let people know you know how queer
they are. Miss Bray takes personal everything I do, and when she saw
that blackboard, up-stairs she ordered me at once. She loves to punish
me, and it's a pleasure I give her often.

I brought my diary with me, and as I can't write when anybody is about,
I don't mind being by myself every now and then. Miss Bray don't know
this, or my punishment would take some other form.

I just love a diary. You see, its something you can tell things to and
not get in trouble. When writing in it I can relieve my feelings by
saying what I think, which Miss Katherine says is risky to do to
people, and that it's safer to keep your feelings to yourself. People
don't really care about them, and there's nothing they get so tired of
hearing about. A diary doesn't talk, neither do animals; but a diary
understands better than animals, and you can call things by their right
name in a book which it isn't safe to do out loud, even to a dog.

I know I am not unthankful, and I would much rather have a Father and
Mother on earth than to have them in heaven, but I guess I should have
kept my preferences to myself. Somehow preferences seem to make people
mad.

But a Mother and Father in heaven _are_ too far away to be truly
comforting. I like the people I love to be close to me. I guess that is
why, when I was little, I used to hold out my arms at night, hoping my
Mother would come and hold me tight. But she never came, and now I know
it's no use.

There are a great many things that are no use. One is in telling people
what they don't want to know. I found that out almost two years ago,
when I wasn't but ten. The way I found out was this.

One morning, it was an awful cold morning, Miss Bray came into the
dining-room just as we were taking our seats for breakfast, and she
looked so funny that everybody stared, though nobody dared to even smile
visible. All the children are afraid of Miss Bray; but at that time I
hadn't found out her true self, and, not thinking of consequences, I
jumped up and ran over to her and whispered something in her ear.

"What!" she said. "What did you say?" And she bent her head so as to
hear better.

"You forgot one side of your face when fixing this morning," I said,
still whispering, not wanting the others to hear. "Only one side is
pink--" But I didn't get any further, for she grabbed my hand and almost
ran with me out of the room.

"You piece of impertinence!" she said, and her eyes had such sparks in
them I knew my judgment-day had come. "You little piece of impertinence!
You shall be punished well for this." I was. I didn't mean to be
impertinent. I thought she'd like to know. I thought wrong.

I loathe Miss Bray. The very sight of her shoulders in the back gets me
mad all over without her saying a word, and everything in me that's
wrong comes right forward and speaks out when she and I are together.
She thinks she could run this earth better than it's being done, and
she walks like she was the Superintendent of most of it. But I could
stand that. I could stand her cheeks, and her frizzed front, and a good
many other things; but what I can't stand is her passing for being
truthful when she isn't. She tells stories, and she knows I know it; and
from the day I found it out I have stayed out of her way; and were she
the Queen of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the United States I'd want
her to stand out of mine. I truly would.

Her outrageousest story I heard her tell myself. It was over a year ago,
and we were in the room where the ladies were having a Board meeting. I
had come in to bring some water, and had a waiter full of glasses in my
hands, and was just about to put them on the table when I heard Miss
Bray tell her Lie.

That's what she did. She Lied!

Those glasses never touched that table. My hands lost their hold, and
down they came with a crash. Every one smashed to smithereens, and I
standing staring at Miss Bray. The way she told her story was this. The
Board deals us out for adoption, and that morning they were discussing a
request for Pinkie Moore, and, as usual, Miss Bray didn't want Pinkie
to go. You see, Pinkie was very useful. She did a lot of disagreeable
things for Miss Bray, and Miss Bray didn't want to lose her. And when
Mrs. Roane, who is the only Board lady truly seeing through her, asked,
real sharplike, why Pinkie shouldn't go this time, Miss Bray spoke out
like she was really grieved.

"I declare, Mrs. Roane," she said--and she twirled her keys round and
round her fingers, and twitched the nostril parts of her nose just like
a horse--"I declare, Mrs. Roane, I hate to tell you, I really do. But
Pinkie Moore wouldn't do for adoption. She has a terrible temper, and
she's so slow nobody would keep her. And then, too"--her voice was the
Pharisee kind that the Lord must hate worse than all others--"and then,
too, I am sorry to say Pinkie is not truthful, and has been caught
taking things from the girls. I hope none of you will mention this, as I
trust by watching over her to correct these faults. She begs me so not
to send her out for adoption, and is so devoted to me that--" And just
then she saw me, which she hadn't done before, I being behind Mrs.
Armstead, and she stopped like she had been hit.

For a minute I didn't breathe. I didn't. All I did was to stare--stare
with mouth open and eyes out; and then it was the glasses went down and
I flew into the yard, and there by the pump was Pinkie.

"Oh, Pinkie!" I said. "Oh, Pinkie!" And I caught her round the waist and
raced up and down the yard like a wild man from Borneo. "Oh, Pinkie,
what do you think?" Poor Pinkie, thinking a mad dog had bit me, tried to
make me stop, but stop I wouldn't until there was no more breath. And
then we sat down on the woodpile, and I hugged her so hard I almost
broke her bones.

First I was so mad I couldn't cry, and then crying so I couldn't speak.
But after a while words came, and I said:

"Pinkie Moore, are you devoted to Miss Bray? Are you? I want the truest
truth. Are you devoted to her?"

"Devoted to Miss Bray? Devoted!" And poor little Pinkie, who has no more
spirit than a poor relation, spoke out for once. "I hate her!" she said.
"I hate her worse than prunes; and if somebody would only adopt me, I'd
be so thankful I'd choke for joy, except for leaving you." Then she
boohoo'd too, and the tears that fell between us looked like we were
artesian wells--they certainly did.

But Pinkie didn't know what caused my tears. Mine were mad tears, and
not being able to tell her why they came, I had to send her to the house
to wash her face. I washed mine at the pump, and then worked off some of
my mad by sweeping the yard as hard as I could, wishing all the time
Miss Bray was the leaves, and trying to make believe she was. I was full
of the things the Bible says went into swine, and I knew there would be
trouble for me before the day was out. But there wasn't. Not even for
breaking the pump-handle was I punished, and Miss Bray tried so hard to
be friendly that at first I did not understand. I do now.

That was my first experience in finding out that some one who looked
like a lady on the outside was mean and deceitful on the inside, and it
made me tremble all over to find it could be so. Since then I have never
pretended to be friends with Miss Bray. As for her, she hates me--hates
me because she knows I know what sort of a person she is, a sort I
loathe from my heart.

When I first got my diary I thought I was going to write in it every
day. I haven't, and that shows I'm no better on resolves than I am on
keeping step. I never keep step. Sometimes I've thought I was really
something, but I'm not. Nobody much is when you know them too well. It
is a good thing for your pride when you keep a diary, specially when you
are truthful in it. Each day that you leave out is an evidence of
character--poor character--for it shows how careless and put-off-y you
are; both of which I am.

But it isn't much in life to be an inmate of a Humane Association, or a
Home, or an Asylum, or whatever name you call the place where job-lot
charity children live. And that's what I am, an Inmate. Inmates are like
malaria and dyspepsia: something nobody wants and every place has.
Minerva James says they are like veterans--they die and yet forever
live.

Well, anyhow, whenever I used to do wrong, which was pretty constant, I
would say to myself it didn't matter, nobody cared. And if I let a
chance slip to worry Miss Bray I was sorry for it; but that was before I
understood her, and before Miss Katherine came. Since Miss Katherine
came I know it's yourself that matters most, not where you live or
where you came from, and I'm thinking a little more of Mary Cary than I
used to, though in a different way. As for Miss Bray, I truly try at
times to forget she's living.

But she's taught me a good deal about Human Nature, Miss Bray has. About
the side I didn't know. It's a pity there are things we have to know. I
think I will make a special study of Human Nature. I thought once I'd
take up Botany in particular, as I love flowers; or Astronomy, so as to
find out all about those million worlds in the sky, so superior to
earth, and so much larger; but I think, now, I'll settle on Human
Nature. Nobody ever knows what it is going to do, which makes it full of
surprises, but there's a lot that's real interesting about it. I like
it. As for its Bray side, I'll try not to think about it; but if there
are puddles, I guess it's well to know where, so as not to step in them.
I wish we didn't have to know about puddles and things! I'd so much
rather know little and be happy than find out the miserable much some
people do.

Anyhow, I won't have to remember all I learn, for Miss Katherine says
there are many things it's wise to forget, and whenever I can I'll
forget mean things. I'd forget Miss Bray's if she'd tell me she was
sorry and cross her heart she'd never do them again. But I don't believe
she ever will. God is going to have a hard time with Miss Bray. She's
right old to change, and she's set in her ways--bad ways.



II

THE COMING OF MISS KATHERINE


Now, why can't I keep on at a thing like Miss Katherine? Why? Because
I'm just Mary Cary, mostly Martha; made of nothing, came from nowhere,
and don't know where I'm going, and have no more system in my nature
than Miss Bray has charms for gentlemen.

But Miss Katherine--well, there never was and never will be but one Miss
Katherine, and there's as much chance of my being like her as there is
of my reaching the stars. I'll never be like her, but she's my friend.
That's the wonderful part of it. She's my friend. And when you've got a
friend like Miss Katherine you've got strength to do anything. To stand
anything, too.

The beautiful part of it is that I live with her; that is, she lives in
the Asylum, and I sleep in the room with her.

It happened this way. Last summer I didn't want to do anything but sit
down. It was the funniest thing, for before that I never did like to sit
down if I could stand up, or skip around, or climb, or run, or dance, or
jump. I never could walk straight or slow, and I never can keep step.

Well, last summer I didn't want to move, and I couldn't eat, and I
didn't even feel like reading. I'd have such queer slipping-away
feelings right in my heart that I'd call myself a drop of ink on a
blotter that was spreading and spreading and couldn't stop. Sometimes I
would think I was sinking down and down, but I really wasn't sinking,
for I didn't move. I only felt like I was, and I was afraid to go to
sleep at night for fear I would die, and I stayed awake so as to know
about it if I did.

And then I began to be afraid of dying, and my heart would beat so I
thought it would wear out. But I didn't tell anybody how I felt. I was
ashamed of being afraid, and I just told God, because I knew He could
understand better than anybody else; and I asked Him please to hold on
to me, I not being able to do much holding myself, and He held. I know
it, for I felt it.

You see, Mrs. Blamire--she's Miss Bray's assistant--was away; Miss Bray
was busy getting ready to go when Mrs. Blamire came back; and Miss Jones
was pickling and preserving. I didn't want to bother her, so I dragged
on, and kept my feelings to myself.

The girls were awful good to me. Real many have relations in Yorkburg,
and if I'd eaten all the fruit they sent me I'd been a tutti-frutti; but
I couldn't eat it. And then one day I began to talk so queer they were
frightened, and told Miss Bray, and she sent for the doctor quick. That
afternoon they took me to the hospital, and the last thing I saw was
little Josie White crying like her heart would break with her arms
around a tree.

"Please don't die, Mary Cary, please don't die!" she kept saying over
and over, and when they tried to make her go in she bawled worse than
ever. I tried to wave my hand.

"I'm not going to die, I'm coming back," I said, and that's all I
remember.

I knew they put me in something and drove off, and then I was in a
little white bed in a big room with a lot of other little beds in it;
and after that I didn't know I was living for three weeks. But I talked
just the same. They told me I made speeches by the hour, and read books
out loud, and recited poems that had never been printed. But when I
stopped and lay like the dead, just breathing, the girls say they heard
there were no hopes, and a lot of them just cried and cried. It was
awful nice of them, and if they hadn't cut my hair off I would have made
a real pretty corpse.

The day I first saw Miss Katherine really good she was standing by my
bed, holding my wrist in one hand and her watch in another, and I
thought she was an angel and I was in heaven. She was in white, and I
took her little white cap for a crown, and I said:

"Are you my Mother?"

She nodded and smiled, but she didn't speak, and I asked again:

"Are you my Mother?"

"Your right-now Mother," she said, and she smiled so delicious I thought
of course I was in heaven, and I spoke once more.

"Where's God?"

Then she stooped down and kissed me.

"In your heart and mine," she answered. "But you mustn't talk, not yet.
Shut your eyes, and I will sing you to sleep." And I shut them. And I
knew I was in heaven, for heaven isn't a place; it's a feeling, and I
had it.

And that's how I met Miss Katherine.

Her father and mother are dead, just like mine. Her father was Judge
Trent, and his father once owned half the houses in Yorkburg, but lost
them some way, and what he didn't lose Judge Trent did after the war.

When her father died Miss Katherine wouldn't live with either of her
brothers, or any of her relations, but went to Baltimore to study to be
a nurse. After she graduated she didn't come back for three or four
years, and she hadn't been back six months when I was taken sick. And
now I sing:

    "Praise God from whom that sickness flew."

Sing it inside almost all the time.

Miss Katherine don't have to be a nurse. She has a little money. I don't
know how much, she never mentioning money before me; but she has some,
for I heard Miss Bray and Mrs. Blamire talking one night when they
thought I was asleep; and for once I didn't interrupt or let them know I
was awake.

I had been punished so often for speaking when I shouldn't that this
time I kept quiet, and when they were through I couldn't sleep. I was
so excited I stayed awake all night. And from joy--pure joy.

I had only been back from the hospital a week, and was in the room next
to Mrs. Blamire's, where the children who are sick stay, when I heard
Miss Bray talking to Mrs. Blamire, and at something she said I sat up in
bed. Right or wrong, I tried to hear. I did.

They were sitting in front of the fire, and Miss Bray leaned over and
cracked the coals.

"Have you heard that Miss Katherine Trent is coming here as a trained
nurse?" she said, and she put down the poker, and, folding her arms,
began to rock.

"You don't mean it!" said Mrs. Blamire, and her little voice just
cackled. "Coming here? To this place? I do declare!" And she drew her
chair up closer, being a little deaf.

"That's what she's going to do." Miss Bray took off her spectacles. "The
Board can't afford to pay her a salary, but she's offered to come
without one, and next week she'll start in."

"Katherine Trent always was queer," she went on, still rocking with all
her might. "She can get big prices as a nurse, though she doesn't have
to nurse at all, having money enough to live on without working. And why
she wants to come to a place like this and fool with fifty-odd children
and get no pay for it is beyond my understanding. It's her business,
however, not mine, and I'm glad she's coming."

"I do declare!" And Mrs. Blamire clapped her hands like she was getting
religion. "My, but I'm glad! Miss Katherine Trent coming here! And next
week, you say? I do declare!" And her gladness sounded in her voice. It
was a different kind from Miss Bray's. Even in the dark I could tell,
for hers was thankfulness for the children. Miss Bray was glad for
herself.

That was almost a year ago, and now my hair has come out and curls worse
than ever. It's very thick, and it's brown--light brown.

I'm always intending to stand still in front of the glass long enough to
see what I do look like, but I'm always in such a hurry I don't have
time. I know my eyes are blue, for Miss Katherine said this morning they
got bigger and bluer every day, and if I didn't eat more I'd be nothing
but eyes. If you don't like a thing, can you eat it? You cannot. That
is, in summer you can't. In winter it's a little easier.

I never have understood how Miss Katherine could have come to an Orphan
Asylum to live and to eat Orphan Asylum meals when she could have eaten
the best in Yorkburg. And Yorkburg's best is the best on earth.
Everybody says that who's tried other places, even Miss Webb, who gets
right impatient with Yorkburg's slowness and enjoyment of itself.

And Miss Katherine is living here from pure choice. That's what she is
doing, and she's made living creatures of us, just like God did when He
breathed on Adam and woke him up.

At the hospital she used to ask me all about the Asylum, and, never
guessing why, I told her all I knew, except about Miss Bray. Miss
Katherine had known the Asylum all her life, but had only been in it
twice--just passing it by, not thinking. When I got better and could
talk as much as I pleased, she wanted to know how many of us there were,
what we did, and how we did it: what we ate, and what kind of
underclothes we wore in winter, and how many times a week we bathed all
over; when we got up, and what we studied, and how long we sewed each
day, and how long we played, and when we went to bed--and all sorts of
other things. I wondered why she wanted to know, and when I found out I
could have laid right down and died from pure gladness. I didn't,
though.

Once I asked her what made her do it, and she laughed and said because
she wanted to, and that she was much obliged to me for having found her
work for her. But I believe there's some other reason she won't tell.

And why I believe so is that sometimes, when she thinks I am asleep, I
see her looking in the fire, and there's something in her face that's
never there at any other time. It's a remembrance. I guess most hearts
have them if they live long enough. But you'd never think Miss Katherine
had one, she's so glad and cheerful and busy all the time. I wonder if
it's a sweetheart remembrance? I know three of her beaux; one in
Yorkburg and two from away, who have been to see her frequent times; but
a beau is different from a sweetheart. I'm sure that look means
something secret, and I bet it's a man. Who is he? I don't know. I wish
he was dead. I do!

When I first came back from the hospital my little old sticks of legs
wouldn't hold me up, and down I would go. But I didn't mind that. I just
minded not going to sleep at night. But sleep wouldn't come, and I'd
get so wide awake trying to make it that I began to have a teeny bit of
fever again, and then it was Miss Katherine asked if she might take me
in her room. I was nervous and still needed attention, she said,
and--magnificent gloriousness!--I was sent to her room to stay until
perfectly well, and I'm here yet. Perfectly well because I am here!

That first night when I got into the little white bed next to her bed,
and knew she was going to be there beside me, I couldn't go to sleep
right off. I kept wishing I was King David, so I could write a book of
gratitudes and psalms and praises, and that was the first night I ever
really prayed right. I didn't ask for a thing except for help to be
worth it--the trouble she was taking for just little me, a charity
child. Just me!

And oh, the difference in her room and the room I had left! She had had
it painted and papered herself, for it hadn't been used since kingdom
come, and the cobwebs in it would have filled a barrel. It had been a
packing-room, and when Miss Katherine first saw it she just whistled
soft and easy; but when she was through, it was just a dream.

It is a big room at the end of the wing, and it has three windows in
it: one in the front and one in the back and one opposite the door you
come in. And when the paper was put on you felt like you were in a great
big garden of roses; pink roses, for they were running all over the
walls, and they were so natural I could smell them. I really could.

Miss Katherine brought her own furniture and things, and she put a
carpet on the floor, all over, not just strips. And the windows had
muslin curtains at them with cretonne curtains just full of pink roses,
looped back from the muslin ones; and the couch and the cushions and
some chairs were all covered with the same kind of pink roses. And as
for the bed, it was too sweet for anybody to lie on--that is, for
anybody but Miss Katherine to lie on.

There was a big closet for her clothes, and a writing-desk which had
been in the family a hundred years--maybe a thousand. I don't know. And
one side of the room was filled with books in shelves which old Peter
Sands made and painted white for her. She lets me look at them as much
as I want, and says I can read as many as I choose when I am old enough
to understand them. She didn't mention any time to begin trying to
understand, and so I started at once, and I've read about forty already.

There aren't a great many pictures on Miss Katherine's walls. Just a few
besides the portraits of her father and mother, oil paintings. And oh,
dear children what are to be, I'm going to have my picture painted as
soon as I marry your father, so you can know what I looked like in case
I should die without warning. I want you to have it, knowing so well
what it means to have nothing that belonged to your mother, I not having
anything--not even a strand of hair or a message.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really did have a Mother, or if the doctor
just left me somewhere and nobody wanted me. I must have had one, for
Betty Johnson says a baby's bound to. That a father isn't so specially
necessary, but you've got to have a Mother. Mine died when I was born. I
wonder how that happened when there wasn't anybody in all this great big
earth to take care of me except my father, who didn't know how. He died,
too, and then I was an Orphan.

This is a strange world, and it's better not to try to understand
things.

In the winter time Miss Katherine always has a beautiful crackling fire
in her room, and some growing flowers and green things. It was a
revelation to the girls, her room was. Not fine, and it didn't cost
much, but you felt nicer and kinder the minute you went in it. And it
made Mrs. Reagan's grand parlors seem like shining brass and tinkling
cymbals. I wonder why?



III

MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA


I am going to write a history of my life. The things that happen in this
place are the same things, just like our breakfasts, dinners, and
suppers. They wouldn't be interesting to hear about, so while waiting
for something real exciting to put down, I am going to write my history.

I don't know very much about who I am. I wish my Mother had left a diary
about herself, but she didn't. Nobody, not even Miss Katherine, will
tell me who I was before I came here, which I did when I was three. I
know my nurse brought me, but I can't remember what she looked like, and
when she went away without me: I never saw nor heard of her again. I
don't even know her name. I thought it was fine to play in a big yard
with a lot of children, and I soon stopped crying for my nurse.

I never did see much sense in crying. Everybody was good to me, and not
being old enough to know I was a Charity child, and by nature happy,
they used to call me Cricket. Sometimes some of them call me that now.

A hundred dozen times I have asked Miss Katherine to tell me something
about myself, but in some way she always gets out of it. I know my
mother and father are dead, but that's all I do know; and I wouldn't ask
Miss Bray if I had to stand alone for ever and ever.

Sometimes I believe Miss Katherine knows something she won't tell me,
but since I found out she don't like me to ask her I've stopped. And not
being able to ask out what I'd like, I think a lot more, and some nights
when I can't go to sleep, it gives me an awful sinking feeling right
down in my stomach, to think in all this great big world there isn't a
human that's any kin to me.

I might have come from the heavens above or the depths below, only I
didn't, and being like other girls in size and shape and feelings, I
know I once did have a Mother and Father. But if they had relations
they've kept quiet, and it's plain they don't want to know anything
about me, never having asked.

It would make me miserable--this aloneness would, if I let it. I won't
let it. I have got to look out for Mary Cary, frequently Martha, and
when you're miserable you don't get much of anything that's going
around. I won't be unhappy. I just won't. I haven't enough other
blessings.

But not being able to speak out as much as I would like on some things
personal, I got into the habit of talking to my other self, which I
named Martha, and which I call my secret sister. Martha is my every-day
self, like the Bible Martha who did things, and didn't worry trying to
find out what couldn't be found out, specially about why God lets
Mothers die.

Mary is my Sunday self who wonders and wonders at everything and asks a
million questions inside, and goes along and lets people think she is
truly Martha when she knows all the time she isn't. And if I do hold out
and write a history of my life, it's going to be a Martha and Mary
history; for some days I'm one, some another, and whichever I happen to
be is plain to be seen.

When I grow up I am going to marry a million-dollar man, so I can travel
around the world and have a house in Paris with twenty bath-rooms in
it. And I'm going to have horses and automobiles and a private car and
balloons, if they are working all right by that time. I hope they will
be, for I want something in which I can soar up and sit and look down on
other people.

All my life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was a
Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary with
fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white
calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats
with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing
fingers when it's cold, and no ice-water when it's hot.

Yes, dear Mary, you and I are going to marry a rich man. (Martha is
writing to-day.) I will try to love him, but if I can't I will be polite
to him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be rich
some day. I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, for
the clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they're going to
be so grand. Miss Katherine would be ashamed of that and make me
ashamed, but this writing is for the relief of feelings.

But there's one thing I'm surer of than I am of being rich, and that is
that there are to be no secrets about my children's mother. They are to
know all about me I can tell, which won't be much or distinguished, but
what there is they're to know. And that's the chief reason I'm going to
write my history, so as to remember in case I forget.

Well, now I will begin. I am eleven years and eleven months and three
days old. I don't have birthday parties. The Yorkburg Female Orphan
Asylum is a large house with a wide hall in the middle, and a wing on
one side that makes it look like Major Green, who lost one arm in the
war.

There are large grounds around the house, and around the grounds is a
high brick wall in front and a wooden fence back and sides. The children
and the chickens use the grounds at the back; the front has grass and
flowers, and is for company, which is seldom. Sometimes, just because I
can't help it, I chase a chicken through the front so as to know how it
feels to run in the grass, which it is forbidden to do.

Forbidden things are so much nicer than unforbidden. I love to do them
until they're done.

The Asylum is on King Street, almost at the very end, and there isn't
much passing, just the Tates and the Gordons and a few others living
farther on. The dining-room is in the basement, half below the ground,
and on cloudy days the lamps have to be lighted--that is, they used to.
Now we have electric lights, and I just love to turn them on. It's such
a grand way to get a thing done, just to press a button.

The dining-room has a picture over the mantel of a cow standing in
yellow-brown grass, and, though hideous, it's a great comfort. That cow
understands our feelings at mealtimes, and we understand hers.

Humane meals are very much like yellow-brown grass, and our clothes are
on the same order as our meals. As for our days, if it wasn't for
calendars we wouldn't know one from the other, except Sundays, for,
unlike the stars mentioned by St. Paul, they differ not.

The rising-bell rings at five o'clock, and all except the very littlest
get up and clean up until seven, when we march into the dining-room. At
7.25 we rise at the tap of Miss Bray's bell, and those who have more
cleaning up-stairs march out; those who clear the table and wash the
dishes stay behind. At 8.30 we march into the school-room, where we
have prayers and calisthenics. The calisthenics are fine. At nine we
begin recitations.

We have a teacher who lives in town, Miss Elvira Strother. She's a good
teacher. The older girls help teach the little ones, and next year I'm
to help.

This Asylum is over ninety (90) years old, but looks much older. There
is just money enough to run it, and it hasn't had any paint or
improvements in the memory of man, except the electric lights. The town
put those in for safety, and don't charge for them.

I wish the town would put in bath-tubs for the same reason. It would
make the children much nicer. They just naturally don't like to wash,
and one small pitcher of water for two girls don't allow much splashing.

But Yorkburg hasn't any water-works, not being born with them. I mean,
water-works not being the fashion when Yorkburg was first begun, nobody
has ever thought of putting them in. Mr. Loyall, he's the mayor, says
everybody has gotten on very well for over two hundred years without
them, and he don't see any use in stirring up the subject. So there'll
never be any change until he's dead, and in Yorkburg nobody dies till
the last thing.

There wouldn't be any electric lights if the shoe factory hadn't come
here. The men who brought it came from New Jersey, and they wanted
light, and got it. And Yorkburg was so pleased that it moved a little
and made some light for itself; and now everything in town just blazes,
even the Asylum.

I used to sleep in No. 4, but I don't sleep there now. It is a big room,
and has six windows in it, and in winter we children used to play we
were arctic explorers and would search for icebergs. The North Pole was
the Reagan's house, half-way down the street, and it might as well have
been, for it was as much beyond our reach.

But it was the one thing we were all going to get some day when we
married rich. And when we got it, we were going to drive up to the Galt
House--that's the Home for Poor and Proud Ladies--and ask for Mrs.
Reagan, who was to be in it in the third floor back, and leave her some
old clothes with the buttons off, and old magazines. None of us could
bear Mrs. Reagan--not a single one.

It is a beautiful house, Mrs. Reagan's is. It has large white pillars
in the front and back, and it's got three bath-rooms, and a big tank in
the back yard. And it has velvet curtains over the lace ones, and gold
furniture and pictures with gold frames a foot wide.

I heard Miss Katherine talking about it to Miss Webb one night. They
were laughing about something Miss Katherine said was the most
impossible of all, and Miss Webb said it was desecrating for such a
stately old house to fall into the hands of such bulgarians. What are
bulgarians? I don't know. But they're not ladies.

Mrs. Reagan is not a lady. The way I found it out was this. Miss Jones,
she's our housekeeper, sent a message to her one day by Bertha Reed and
me about some pickles. Bertha is awful timid, and she didn't know
whether or not we ought to go to the front door; but I did, and I told
her to come on.

"I don't go to back doors, if I don't know my family history," I said.
"I know who I am, and something inside of me tells me where to go." And
I pressed the button so hard I thought I'd broken it unintentional.

The man-servant opened the door and looked at us as if weary and
surprised, and said nothing.

"Is Mrs. Reagan in?" I asked.

"She is."

That's all he said. He waited. I waited. Then I stepped forward.

"We will come in," I said. "And you go and tell her Mary Cary would like
to see her, having a message from Miss Jones." And he was so surprised
he moved aside, and in I walked.

I had heard so much about this house that I wasn't going to miss seeing
what was in it, if that fool man was rude; so while he was gone to get
Mrs. Reagan I counted everything in the front parlor as quick as I
could, and told Bertha to count everything in the back.

There were three sofas and two mirrors and nine chairs and six rugs and
six tables and two pianos, one little old-fashioned one and a big new
one; and three stools and seventeen candlesticks and four pedestals with
statuary on them, some broken, all naked; and seven palms and
twenty-three pictures and two lamps and five red-plush curtains, three
pairs over the lace ones and two at the doors; and as for ornaments, it
was a shop. And not one single book.

I am sure I got the things right, for I'd been practising remembering
at observation parties, in case I ever got a chance to see inside this
house; and I looked hard so I could tell the girls.

Poor Bertha was so frightened she didn't remember anything but the clock
and a china cat and an easel and picture, and before I could count Mrs.
Reagan came in.

She stopped in the doorway, and had we come from leper-land she couldn't
have held herself farther off.

"What are you doing in here?" she asked, and she tried the haughty
air--"What are you doing in here?"

"We were waiting for you," I said. "We have a message from Miss Jones."

"Well, another time don't wait in here, and don't come to the front door
if you have a message from Miss Jones or Miss Any-body-else. I don't
want any pickles this year. Had I wanted any I would have sent her word.
You understand? Don't ever come here again in this way!" And she waved
us out as if we were flies.

For a minute I looked at her as if she were a Mrs. Jorley's wax-works,
and then I made a bow like I make in charades.

"We understand," I said. "And we will not come again. We've heard a
good many people in Yorkburg have been once and no more." And I bowed
again and walked past her like she was a stage character, which she was,
being a pretence and nothing else.

Mad? I tell you, I was Martha for a week, and then I saw, real sudden,
how silly I was to let a bulgarian make me mad.

But if I'm ever expected to love anything like that, it will be
expecting too much of Mary Cary, mostly Martha, for she isn't an enemy.
She's just a make-believe of something she wasn't born into being and
don't know how to make herself. She don't agree with my nature, and if I
had a parlor she couldn't come into it either. She could not.



IV

THE STEPPED-ON AND THE STEPPERS


I 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.



V

"HERE COMES THE BRIDE!"


I 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:

    1

    Here comes the Bride,
    God save the Groom!
    And please don't let any chil-i-il-dren come,
    For they don't know
    How children feel,
    Nor do they know how with chil-dren to deal.

    2

    She's still an old maid,
    Though she would not have been
    Could she have mar-ri-ed any kind of man.
    But she could not.
    So to the Humane
    She came, and caus-ed a good deal of pain.

    3

    But now she's here
    To be married, and go
    Away with her red-headed, red-bearded beau.
    Have mercy, Lord,
    And help him to bear
    What we've been doing this many a year!

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!"



VI

"MY LADY OF THE LOVELY HEART"


Beautiful 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:

    "Before marriage, men love most.
    After marriage, women best.
    Marriage many changes makes--
    Heart is happy or heart breaks."

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.



VII

"STERILIZED AND FERTILIZED"


This 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:

    1

    Out upon life's ocean vast,
    With the current drifting fast,
    I am sailing. Oh, alas,
    'Tis a lonely feeling!

    2

    Why was such a trip e'er started
    On a pathway all uncharted?
    Why from loved ones was I parted?
    Who will answer? Who?

    3

    None will answer. So I'll see
    What there is on this journey (journee)
    That will bring good-luck to me--
    I'll look out and see!

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.



VIII

MARY CARY'S BUSINESS


This 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.



IX

LOVE IS BEST


Christmas is over. I feel like the parlor grate when the fire has gone
out.

But it was a grand Christmas, the grandest we've ever known. It came on
Christmas Day. From the time we got up until we went to bed we were so
happy we forgot we were Charity children; and no matter whatever
happens, we've got one beautiful time to look back on.

Miss Katherine says a beautiful memory is a possession no one can take
from you, and it's one of the best possessions you can have. I think so,
too. She's made all my memories. All. I mean the precious ones.

Everybody in this Orphan Asylum had a present from somebody outside.
Even me, who might as well be that man in the Bible, Melchesey
something, who didn't have beginning or end, or any relations.

I had fourteen from outside. Some I hid, because I didn't want the girls
to know, several not getting more than one, and hardly any more than
three or four.

Those who had the heart to give them didn't have the money, and those
who had the money didn't have the heart. Being so busy with their own
they forgot to remember, and if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine and
her friends this last Christmas would have been like all others.

Her Army brother's wife sent a box full of all sorts of pretty Indian
things, she being in the wild West near the Indians who made them. And
she sent ten dolls, all dressed, for the ten youngest girls.

She is awful busy, having three children and not much money; but Miss
Katherine says busy people make time, and those who have most to do, do
more still.

She sent me the darlingest little bedroom slippers with fur all around
the top. And in them she put a little note that made me cry and cry and
cry, it was so dear and mothery. I don't know what made me cry, but I
couldn't help it. I couldn't.

She doesn't know me except from what Miss Katherine writes, and I
wonder why she wrote that note. But everybody is good to me--that is,
nearly everybody.

It certainly makes a difference in your backbone when people are kind
and when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune and
suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm
stifferer than a lamp-post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when any
one is good to me, I haven't a bit of firmness, and am no better than a
caterpillar.

I got thirty-one presents this year. Thirty-one! I didn't know I had so
many friends in Yorkburg, and my heart was so bursting with surprise and
gratitude it just ached. Ached happy.

We are not often allowed to make regular visits, but I have lots of
little talks informal on errands, or messages, or passing; and as I know
almost everybody by sight, I have a right large speaking acquaintance.
With some people, Miss Katherine says, that's the safest kind to have.

You see, Yorkburg is a very small place. Just three long streets and
some short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it hasn't got
three thousand people in it. A lot of them are colored.

But it's very old and historic. Awful old; so is everything in it. As
for its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's more in Yorkburg than any
place of its size in America.

Most of the strangers who come here, though, seem to prefer to pass on
rather than stop, and Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. A
little red mixed in might wake Yorkburg up, she says, and that's what it
needs--to know the war is over and the change has come to stay.

But I love Yorkburg, and most of the people are dear. Some queer. Old
Mrs. Peet is. Her husband has been dead forty years, but she still keeps
his hat on the rack for protection, and whenever any one goes to see her
after dark she always calls him, as if he were upstairs.

She lives by herself and is over seventy, and she's pretended so long
that he's living that they say she really believes he is. She almost
makes you believe it, too.

Miss Bray sent me there one night. She wanted some cherry-bounce for
Eliza Green, who had an awful pain, and after I'd knocked, I'd have run
if I'd dared.

In the hall I could hear Mrs. Peet pounding on the floor with her stick.
Then her little piping voice:

"Mr. Peet, Mr. Peet, you'd better come down! There's some one at the
door! You'd better come down, Mr. Peet!"

"It's just Mary Cary!" I called. "Miss Bray sent me, Mrs. Peet. She
wants some cherry-bounce."

"Oh, all right, Mr. Peet. You needn't bother to come down. It's just
little Mary Cary." And she opened the door a tiny crack and peeped
through.

"Mr. Peet isn't very well to-night," she said. "He's taken fresh cold.
But you can come in."

I came; but I didn't want to. And if Mr. Peet had come down those steps
and shaken hands I wouldn't have been surprised. It's certainly strange
how something you know isn't true seems true; and Mr. Peet, dead forty
years, seemed awful alive that night. Every minute I thought he'd walk
in.

She likes you to think he's living at night. Every day she goes to his
grave, which is in the churchyard right next to where she lives; but at
night he comes back to life to her. She's so lonely, I think it's
beautiful that he comes.

I make out like I think he comes, too, and I always send him my love,
and ask how his rheumatism is. I tell you, Martha don't dare smile when
I do it. She don't even want to.

And, don't you know, old Mrs. Peet sent me a Christmas present, too. A
pair of mittens. She knit them herself. It was awful nice of her.

I don't know how big the check was that Miss Katherine's billionaire
brother sent her to spend on the children's Christmas, but it must have
been a corker. The things she bought with it cost money, and the change
it made in the Asylum was Cinderellary. It was.

She bought a carpet for the parlor, and some curtains for the windows,
and a bookcase of books.

For the dining-room she bought six new tables and sixty chairs. They
were plain, but to sit at a table with only ten at it instead of forty,
as I'd been sitting for many years, was to have a proud sensation in
your stomach. Mine got so gay I couldn't eat at the first meal.

To have a chair all to yourself, after sitting on benches so old they
were worn on both edges, was to feel like the Queen of Sheba, and I felt
like her. I could have danced up and down the table, but instead I said
grace over and over inside. I had something to say it for. All of us
did.

Besides a present, each of us had a new dress. It was made of
worsted--real worsted, not calico; and that morning after breakfast, and
after everything had been cleaned up, we put on our new dresses and came
down in the parlor.

And such a fire as there was in it!

It sputtered and flamed, and danced and blazed, and crackled and roared.
Oh, it knew it was Christmas, that fire did, and the mistletoe and holly
and running cedar knew it, too!

At first, though, the children felt so stiff and funny in their
new-shaped dresses made like other children's that they weren't natural,
so I pretended we were having a soirée, and I went round and shook hands
with every one.

They got to laughing so at the names I gave them--names that fit some,
and didn't touch others by a thousand years--that the stiffness went.
And if in all Yorkburg there was a cheerfuller room or a happier lot of
children that Christmas Day than we were, we didn't hear of it. I don't
believe there was, either.

The reason we enjoyed this Christmas so was because it was on Christmas
Day.

Our celebrations had always been after Christmas, and Christmas after
Christmas is like cold buckwheat cakes and no syrup. Like an orange with
the juice all gone.

As for the tree, it was a spanker. We were dazed dumb for a minute when
the parlor doors leading into the sewing-room were opened. But never
being able to stay dumb long, I commenced to clap. Then everybody
clapped. Clapped so hard half the candles went out.

There wasn't a soul on the place that didn't get a present. This tree
was Miss Katherine's, not the Board's, and the presents bought with the
brother's money were things we could keep. Not things to put away and
pass on to somebody else next year. I almost had a fit when I found I
had roller-skates and a set of books too. Think of it! Roller-skates and
books! The rich brother sent those himself, and I'm still wondering why.

This was Miss Katherine's second Christmas with us, but the first she
had managed herself. Last Christmas she had been at the Asylum such a
short time she kept quiet, and just saw how things were done. And not
done. But this year she asked if she could provide the entertainment,
and the difference in these last two Christmases was like the difference
in the way things are done from love and duty.

And oh! love is so much the best!

I do believe I was the happiest child in all the world that day, and I
didn't come out of that cloud of glory until night. Mrs. Christopher
Pryor took me out.

She had come over with some of the Board ladies to see the tree and
things, and as she was going home I heard her say:

"I don't approve of all this. Not at all. Not at all. These children
have had a more elaborate Christmas than mine. They've had as good a
dinner, a handsomer tree, and as many presents as some well-off people.
It's all nonsense, putting notions in their heads when they're as poor
as poverty itself and have their living to make. I don't approve of it.
Not at all."

She bristled so stiff and shook her head so vigorous that the little jet
ornaments on her bonnet just tinkled like bells, and one fell off.

Mrs. Christopher Pryor is one of the people who would like to tell the
Lord how to run this earth. She could run it. That He lets the rain fall
and sun shine on everybody alike is a thing she don't approve of either.
As for poor people, she thinks they ought to be thankful for breath, and
not expect more than enough to keep it from going out for good.

She's very decided in her views, and never keeps them to herself. It's
the one thing she gives away. Everything else she holds on to with such
a grip that it keeps her upper lip so pressed down on her under lip that
she breathes through her nose most of the time.

She's a very curious shape. Being stout, she has to hold her head up to
keep her chin off her fatness; and she goes in so at the waist, coming
out top and bottom, that you would think something in her would get
jammed out of place. You really would.

There are seven daughters. No sons. The boys call their place Hen-House.
There is a husband, but nobody seems to notice him; and when with his
wife, he always walks behind.

Miss Webb says she's sorry for a man whose wife is too active in the
church. Mrs. Pryor is. She leads all the responses; and as for the
chants, she takes them right out of the choir's mouth and soars off with
them.

I never could bear her; and when I heard her say those words to Mrs.
Marsden, I came right down to earth and was Martha Cary in a minute. I'd
been Mary all day, and, like a splash in a mud-puddle, she made me
Martha; and I heard myself say:

"No, Mrs. Pryor, we know you don't approve. You never yet have let a
child here forget she was a Charity child, and only people who make
others happy will approve."

Then I walked away as quiet as a Nun's daughter. But I was burning hot
all the same, and so surprised at the way Martha spoke, so serious and
unlike the way she usually speaks when mad, that I had to go on the back
porch and make snowballs and throw hard at something before I was all
right again.

But I wouldn't let it ruin my beautiful day. I wouldn't.

That night, when I went to bed, I was so tired out with happiness I
couldn't half say my prayers. But I knew God understood. He let the
Christ-child be born poor and lowly, so He could understand about
Charity children, and everybody else who goes wrong because they don't
know how to go right. So I just thanked Him, and thanked Him in my
heart.

And when Miss Katherine kissed me good-night and tucked me in bed, she
said I'd made her have a beautiful Christmas. That I'd helped everybody
and kept things from dragging, because I had enjoyed it so myself, and
been so enthusiastic, and she was so glad I was born that way.

I thought she was making fun, it was so ridiculous, thanking me, little
Mary Cary, who hadn't done a thing but be glad and seen that nobody was
forgot.

But she wasn't making fun, and I went off to sleep and dreamed I was in
a place called the Love-Land, where everybody did everything just for
love. Which shows it was a dreamland, for on earth there're Brays and
Pryors, and people too busy to be kind. And in that Love-Land everything
was done the other way, just backward from our way, and yourself came
second instead of first.



X

THE REAGAN BALL


It is snowing fast and furious to-day. It's grand to watch it. I love
miracles, and it's a miracle to see an ugly place turn into a palace of
marble and silver with diamond decorations. That's what the Asylum is
to-day. I certainly would like to have seen the Reagan ball. Miss Webb
says it was the best show ever given in Yorkburg, and she enjoyed it,
being particular fond of freaks.

Miss Katherine didn't want to go, but Miss Webb made her. For weeks that
Reagan ball had been talked about, and Yorkburg knew things about it
that had never been known about parties before, money not often being
mentioned here.

Everybody knew what this ball was going to cost. Knew the supper was
coming from New York, with white waiters and kid gloves. And what Mrs.
Reagan and her daughters were going to wear. That their dresses had been
made in Europe, and that Mrs. Hamner hadn't been invited, and that more
money was coming to Yorkburg in the shape of one man than had ever been
in it altogether before.

If I just could have put myself invisible on a picture-frame and looked
down on that fleeting show I would have done it. But not being able to
work that miracle, I just heard what was going round, and it was very
interesting, the things I heard.

Miss Webb and Miss Katherine and I think just alike about Mrs. Reagan. I
know, for I heard them talking one night just before the ball.

"But why in the name of Heaven should I go if I don't want to?" said
Miss Katherine, and she put her feet on the fender and lay back in her
big rose-covered chair. "I don't like her, or her family, the English
she speaks, or the books she reads. Why, then, should I go to her
parties? I'm not going!"

"Oh yes, you are." And Miss Webb put some more coal on the fire and made
it blaze. "Knowledge of life requires a knowledge of humanity In all its
subdivisions. Mrs. Reagan is a new sub. As a curio, she's worth the
price. You couldn't keep me from her show."

"But she's such a snob. When a woman does not know her grandfather's
first name on her mother's side and talks of people not being in her
set, Christian charity does not require you to visit her. I agree with
Mrs. Rodman. People like that ought to be let alone."

"But Mrs. Rodman isn't going to let them alone. Not for a minute. The
only thing that goes on among them that she doesn't know is what she
can't find out. She met me this morning, and asked me if I'd heard how
many people had gotten here, and when I said no, she made me come in
Miss Patty's store, and told me all she'd been able to discover.

"'There are eighteen guests already,' she said, 'and nearly all have
rooms to themselves. They tell me it's the fashion now for husbands and
wives not to see each other until breakfast, and not then if the wife
wants hers in bed.' And the way she lifted her chin and eyebrows would
be dangerous for you to try.

"'I tell you it's a reflection on Yorkburg's mode of life,' she went on.
'For two hundred years people have come and gone in this town, and
rooms have never been mentioned. But this is a degenerate age.
Degenerate! Scandalous wealth shouldn't be recognized, and I don't
intend to countenance it myself!'

"But she will." And Miss Webb took up her muff to go. "She bought a pair
of cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she's going to wear
them at that ball. You couldn't keep her away."

And she was there. The first one, they say. She had on the dress her
Grandmother wore when her great-grandfather was minister to something in
Europe; and when she sailed around the rooms with the big, high comb in
her hair that was her great-great-grandmother's, Miss Webb says she was
the best side-show on the grounds.

But if you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head,
you couldn't make her believe anybody would smile at Her.

She was Mrs. General Rodman, born Mason, and the best blood in Virginia
was in her veins. Also in her father's, as she put on his tombstone.

Outside of Virginia she didn't think anybody was really anything. Of
course, she knew there were other states where things were done that
made money, but she'd just wave her hand if you mentioned them.

As for a Yankee! I wouldn't like to put in words what she does think of
a Yankee.

She lost a husband and two brothers and a father and four nephews and an
uncle in the war; and all her money; and her house had to be sold; and
her baby died before its father saw it; and, of course, that makes a
difference. It makes a Yankee real personal.

But Miss Katherine don't feel that way about Yankees. Each of her
brothers married one, and she don't seem to mind.

Miss Katherine went to the ball, too. She gave in, after all, and went.

I wish you could have seen her when she was dressed and all ready to go.
She had on a long, white satin dress, low neck and short sleeves, with
little trimming and no jewelry. And she looked so tall and beautiful,
and so something I didn't have a name for, that I was afraid, and my
heart beat so thick and fast I thought she'd hear.

I hated it. Hated that satin dress, and the places where she wore it
when away from the Asylum; and I sat up in bed, for lying down it was
hard to breathe.

Presently she turned from the fire where she had been standing, looking
in, and came toward me and kissed me good-night.

In her face was something I had never seen before--something so quiet
and proud that I couldn't sleep for a long time after she went away.

It wasn't just the same as the remembrance look I had seen several times
before, when she forgot she wasn't by herself. It was prouder than that,
and it meant something that didn't get better--just worse.

What was it? If it's a man, who is he? He must be living, for it isn't
the look that means something is dead. It means something that won't
die, but is never, never going to be told.



XI

FINDING OUT


This world is a hard place to live in. I wish somebody would tell me
what we are born for anyway, and what's the use of living.

There are so many things that hurt, and you get so mixed up trying to
understand, that if you don't keep busy you'll spend your life guessing
at a puzzle that hasn't any answer.

Miss Katherine has gone away. Gone to stay two months, anyhow. Maybe
three.

Her Army brother, the one who is a Captain, has been sent to Texas, and
his wife and children were taken ill as soon as they got there.

Of course, they sent for Miss Katherine; that is, asked her by telegraph
if she wouldn't come. She went. And she'll be going to somebody all her
life, for she's the kind that is turned to when things go wrong.

Miss Webb is awful worried. She says a cool head and a warm heart are
always worked to death, and the person who has them is forever on call.

Miss Katherine has them.

She had to go, of course. We were not sick, except a few snifflers. We
didn't exactly need her, and her brother did; but oh the difference her
being away makes!

Three months of doing without her is like three months of daylight and
no sunlight. It's like things to eat that haven't any taste; like a room
in which the one you wait for never comes.

I am back in No. 4, in one of the thirteen beds. My body goes on doing
the same things. Gets up at five o'clock. Dresses, cleans, prays, eats,
goes to school, eats, sews, plays, eats, studies, goes to bed. And
that's got to be done every day in the same way it was done the day
before.

But it's just my body that does them. Outside I am a little machine
wound up; inside I am a thousand miles away, and doing a thousand other
things. Some day I am going to blow up and break my inside workings, for
I wasn't meant to run regular and on time. I wasn't.

What was I meant for? I don't know. But not to be tied to a rope. And
that's what I am. Tied to a rope. If I were a boy I'd cut it.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am almost crazy! A wonderful thing has happened. I am so excited my
breathing is as bad as old Miss Betsy Hays's. I believe I know who I am.

My heart is jumping and thumping and carrying on so that it makes my
teeth chatter; and as I can't tell anybody what I've heard, I am likely
to die from keeping it to myself.

I am _not_ going to die until I find out. If I did I would be as bad off
in heaven as on earth. Even an angel would prefer to know something
about itself.

I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise it
wouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matter
when you're swamped in miserableness. I suppose that's what hell is:
Miserableness.

What are you when you don't go to heaven?

But that's got nothing to do with how I found out who I am. It's like
Martha, though: always butting in with questions no Mary on earth could
answer.

Well, the way I found out was one of those mysterious ways in which God
works his wonders. Yesterday afternoon I asked Miss Bray if I could go
over and play with the Moon children, three of whom are sick, and she
said I might. We were in the nursery, which is next to Mrs. Moon's
bedroom, and she and the lady from Michigan, who is visiting her, were
talking and paying no attention to us. Presently something the lady
said--her name is Mrs. Grey--made everything in me stop working, and my
heart gave a little click like a clock when the pendulum don't swing
right.

She was sitting with her back to the door, which was open, and I could
see her, but she couldn't see me. All of a sudden she put down her
sewing and looked at Mrs. Moon as if something had just come to her.

"Elizabeth Moon, I believe I know that child's uncle," she said. "Ever
since you told me about her something has been bothering me. Didn't you
say her mother had a brother who years ago went West?"

"Hush," said Mrs. Moon, and she nodded toward me. "She'll hear you, and
the ladies wouldn't like it."

She lowered her voice so I couldn't hear all she said, but I heard
something about its being the only thing Yorkburg ever did keep quiet
about. And only then because everybody felt so sorry for her. In a flash
I knew they were talking about me.

After the first understanding, which made everything in me stop,
everything got moving, and all my inward workings worked double quick.
Why my heart didn't get right out on the floor and look up at me. I
don't know. I kept on talking and making up wild things just to keep the
children quiet, but I had to hold myself down to the floor. To help, I
put Billy and Kitty Lee both in my lap.

What I wanted to do was to go to Mrs. Moon and say: "I am twelve and a
half, and I've got the right to know. I want to hear about my uncle. I
don't want to know him, he not caring to know me." But before I could
really think Mrs. Grey spoke again.

"He has no idea his sister left a child. He told me she married very
young, and died a year afterward; and he had heard nothing from her
husband since. As soon as I go home I am going to tell him. I certainly
am."

"You had better not," said Mrs. Moon. "It's been thirteen years since he
left Yorkburg, and, as he has never been back, he evidently doesn't
care to know anything about it. I don't think the ladies would like you
to tell. They are very proud of having kept so quiet out of respect to
her father's wishes. If Parke Alden had wanted to learn anything, he
could have done it years ago."

"But I tell you he doesn't know there's anything to learn." And the
Michigan lady's voice was as snappy as the place she came from. "I know
Dr. Alden well," she went on. "He's operated on me twice, and I've spent
weeks in his hospital. When he tells me it's best for my head to come
off--off my head is to come. And when a man can make people feel that
way about him, he isn't the kind that's not square on four sides.

"I tell you, he doesn't know about this child. He's often talked to me
about Yorkburg, knowing you were my cousin. He told me of his sister
running away with an actor and marrying him, and dying a year later.
Also of his father's death and the sale of the old home, and of many
other things. There's no place on earth he loves as he does Virginia. He
doesn't come back because there's no one to come to see specially. No
real close kin, I mean. The changes in the place where you were born
make a man lonelier than a strange city does, and something seems to
keep him away."

"You say he doesn't know his sister left a child?" Mrs. Moon put down
the needle she was trying to thread, and stuck it in her work. "Why
doesn't he know?"

"Why should he? Who was there to tell him, if a bunch of women made up
their minds he shouldn't know? He wrote to his sister again and again,
but whether his letters ever reached her he never knew. He thinks not,
as it was unlike her not to write if they were received.

"Travelling from place to place with her actor husband, who, he said,
was a 'younger son Englishman,' the letters probably miscarried, and not
for months after her death did he know she was dead."

"We didn't, either," interrupted Mrs. Moon. "In fact, we heard it
through Parke, who went West after his father's death. He wrote Roy
Wright, telling him about it."

"Who is Roy Wright, and where is he, that he didn't tell Dr. Alden about
the child?"

"Oh, Roy's dead. I believe Mary Alden's marriage broke Roy's heart;
that is, if a man's heart can be broken. He had been in love with her
all her life. Not just loved her, but in love with her. His house was
next to the Aldens', where the Reagans now live, and Major Alden and
General Wright were old friends, each anxious for the match. When Mary
ran away at seventeen and married a man her father didn't know, I tell
you Yorkburg was scared to death."

"Do you remember it?"

"Remember! I should think I did. I cried for two weeks. Nearly ruined my
eyes. Mary and I were deskmates at Miss Porterfield's school, and I
adored her. I really did. So did Dick Moon." She stopped. Then: "Like
most women, I'm a compromise," and she laughed. But it was a happy
laugh. Mrs. Grey smiled too.

"Was Mary Alden engaged to Roy Wright when she married the other man?"
she asked. "Tell me all about her."

"No, she wasn't. Mary Alden was incapable of deceit, and Roy Wright knew
she didn't love him. He knew she was never going to marry him. Poor Roy!
He was as gentle and sweet and patient as Mary was high-spirited and
beautiful, and the last type on earth to win a woman of Mary's
temperament. She wanted to be mastered, and Roy could only worship."

"And her father--what did he do?"

"Do? The Aldens are not people who 'do' things. The day after the news
came, he and General Wright walked arm and arm all over Yorkburg, and
their heads were high; but oh, my dear, it was pitiful. They didn't
know, but they were clinging to each other, and the Major's face was
like death."

"Didn't some one say he had been pretty strict with her? Held too tight
a rein?"

"Yes, he had, and he deserved part of his suffering. His pride was
inherited, and Mary could go with no one whose great-grandparents he
didn't know about. But Mary cared no more for ancestors than she did for
Hottentots. When she met this Mr. Cary, a young English actor, at a
friend's house in Baltimore, she made no inquiry as to whether he had
any, and fell in love at once. He was a gentleman, however. That was as
evident as Major Alden's rage when he went to see the latter, and asked
for Mary. Mrs. Rodman happened to be in the house at the time, and what
she didn't see she heard. She says the one thing you can't fool her
about is a counterfeit gentleman. And Ralston Cary was no counterfeit."

"For Heaven's sake, don't get on what Mrs. Rodman thinks or says. Tell
me about the marriage. I'm asking a lot of questions, but you're so
slow."

"I'm telling as fast as I can. You interrupt so much with questions I
can't finish." And Mrs. Moon's voice was real spunky.

"They were married in Washington," she began again. "The morning after
the interview with the Major they caught the five-o'clock train, and
that afternoon there was a telegram telling of the marriage.

"Her father never forgave Mary. Seven months later he died, and after
settling up affairs there was nothing left. Alden House was mortgaged to
the limit. There were a number of small debts as well as two or three
large ones, and when these were paid and all accounts squared there was
barely enough left for Parke to buy his railroad ticket to some city out
West, where he had secured a place as resident physician in a hospital.
That was thirteen years ago." She took a deep breath, as if thinking.
"Thirteen years. Since then we've known little about him. You say he is
a famous surgeon? We've never heard it in Yorkburg."

"Of course you haven't. Yorkburg has heard nothing since 1865. But there
are a good many things it could hear." And Mrs. Grey laughed, but with
her forehead wrinkled, as if she were trying to understand something
that was puzzling her.

And then it was Mrs. Moon said something that made understanding come
rolling right in on me. The answer to that look on Miss Katherine's face
the night of the Reagans' ball was as plain as Jimmie Jenkins's nose,
which is most all you see when you see Jimmie. It was like I thought. It
was a man.

"Ophelia," said Mrs. Moon, and she moved her chair closer to Mrs. Grey,
and leaned forward with her hands clasped, "did you ever hear Doctor
Alden speak of a Miss Trent--Miss Katherine Trent?"

"No. You mean--"

"Yes; she's the one. Parke Alden and Katherine Trent were sweethearts
from children. Shortly after Mary's marriage something happened. There
was a misunderstanding of some kind, and they barely bowed when they
met. Everybody was sorry, for it was one of the matches Heaven might
have made without discredit. Soon after Parke went away, Katherine went
off to some school just outside of Philadelphia, and, so far as is
known, they've never seen each other since."

Mrs. Grey brought both hands down on her knees. "I knew it was something
like that. I knew it! Doctor Alden is just that sort of a man. And it's
Katherine Trent? I wish I'd known it before she went away."

"What would you have done?" Mrs. Moon looked frightened. She's very
timid, Mrs. Moon is, and always afraid of telling something she
oughtn't. "What could you have done?"

"Looked at her better. She's certainly good to look at. Not beautiful,
but a face you never forget. And Doctor Alden is the kind that never
forgets. But tell me something about the child. How did she get here?"

"Her nurse brought her. Her father kept her after her mother's death,
taking her about from place to place with this old negro mammy until she
was three, when he died suddenly, strange to say, in the same place his
wife died, Mobile, Alabama."

"Why did the nurse bring her here? Was she a Yorkburg darkey?"

"No; but she had heard Mr. Cary say there was an Orphan Asylum here,
and not knowing what else to do, she came on with her. She told the
Board ladies she had heard the child's father say a hundred times he
would rather see her dead than have her mother's family take her. And
she begged them not to let it be known who she was until she was old
enough to understand."

Just then Bobbie Moon laid out flat on his back and kicked up his heels.
And Billie looked so disgusted, I stopped the story I was trying to
tell.

"You ain't talking sense," he said. "And I'm not going to listen any
more. An ant can't eat an elephant in half an hour and leave no scraps."
And he rolled over and began to fight Bobbie.

Sarah Sue and Myrtle, who'd been playing with their mother's muff and
tippet, got to fussing so about which should have her hat that Mrs.
Moon, hearing it, jumped up, and I heard her say:

"Mercy me! Do you suppose she heard?"

I never was so glad of a fight in my life. The more fuss was made the
more chance there was of my being forgot, and presently I told Mrs. Moon
I had to go home. The boys said they didn't care, my stories were
rotten anyhow, and out I went and ran so fast I had such a pain in my
side I could hardly breathe.

But I didn't go in right away. I couldn't. Inside of me everything was
thumping: "Mary Alden, your Mother; Mary Alden, your Mother; Mary Alden,
your Mother." There was no other thought but that.

Presently I turned and went down to King Street, to where the Reagans
live, and in the dark I stood there and shook my fist at my dead
grandfather. I hated him for treating my mother so. Hated him! Then I
burst out crying, and cried so awful my eyes were nearly washed out.

There were twelve and a half years' worth of tears that had to come out,
and I let them come. After they were out I felt lighter.

But sleep? There wasn't a blink of it for me all night. I was so mixed
up with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach, and my old
conscience got so sanctimonious that if I could have spanked it I would.

I wasn't eavesdropping; I know that's nasty. But forty times I'd been
punished for speaking when I shouldn't, and, besides, it was my duty to
find myself. They saw me, and then forgot. If they hadn't wanted me to
know what they were saying, they shouldn't have said it.

But that didn't do my conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It's
always making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I will
say anything to my children about one, and let them have some peace.

For two days I didn't have any. Then I decided I'd wait until Miss
Katherine came, and not say anything to her or to anybody about what I'd
heard until I found out a little more about that remembrance in her
face. But the waiting for her is the longest wait I've ever waited
through yet.

It certainly is queer what a surprise you are to yourself. Before I knew
that my mother and her father and his father and some other fathers
behind him had lived in the Alden House, I would have given all I own,
which isn't much, just my body, to have known it. And I guess I would
have been that airy Martha couldn't have lived with me, and would have
had to take Mary to the pump to bring her senses back with water. Mary
is my best part, but at times she hasn't half the common sense she
needs, and frequently has a pride Martha has to attend to.

But after I found out I had the same kind of blood in me that Mrs.
General Rodman had in her, though I'm thankful it isn't mentioned on the
family's tombstones, it didn't seem half as big a thing as I thought.

I was ashamed of the way it had acted, and of the way it had treated my
father. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about his, whether high
or low, and I know nothing about him. But I adore his memory! I am his
child as well as Mary Alden's, and that's a thing my children are never
going to forget. Never.

And now the part I'm thinking of most is what was said about Miss
Katherine and Dr. Parke Alden being sweethearts when they were young. He
has been away thirteen years, Mrs. Moon said, and Miss Katherine is now
twenty-eight. I know she is, because she told me so.

Thirteen from twenty-eight leaves fifteen, so she was fifteen when they
had that fuss and he went off. Fifteen was awful young to love hard and
permanent; but Miss Webb says Miss Katherine was born grown and
stubborn, and when she once takes a stand she keeps it.

I wonder what she took the stand with Uncle Parke for? She is right
quick and outspoken at times, and I bet he made her mad about
something.

But she ought to have known he was a man, and not expected much. I know
my children's father is going to make me so hopping at times I could
shake him. If he didn't, he would be terrible stupid to live with, and
nothing wears you out like stupidness. I don't really mind a scrap. It's
so nice to make up.

But I believe that's the reason Miss Katherine don't get married.
Because in her secret heart Dr. Parke Alden is still her sweetheart. I
know in his secret heart she is still his. She's bound to be if she ever
once was.

Glorious superbness! Wouldn't that be grand? If they were to get married
she would be my really, truly Aunt! The very thought makes me so full of
thrills I can't sit still when it comes over me.

Oh, Mary Martha Cary, what a beautiful place this world could be!



XII

A TRUE MIRACLE


A secret isn't any pleasure. What's the use of knowing a thing you can't
let anybody know you know? If I can't tell soon what I've heard about
myself something is liable to happen.

Nearly three months have passed, and I haven't told yet. I'm still
holding out, but it's the most awful experience I ever had.

Another idea has come to me, and if I could see Miss Katherine I could
tell whether to do it or not. If she don't come soon I will do it,
anyhow. I won't be able to help it.

The girls say if I were a darkey they'd think I was seeking. That's
because some days I'm so unnatural quiet and stay so much by myself. I
do that for safety, fearing otherwise I'd speak.

They don't know what's going on inside of me. If they could see they'd
find nothing but quiverings and questions, and if I don't do anything
really violent it's all I ask.

Every morning and every night my prayers are just this: "O Lord, help
Mary Cary through this day. I'm not asking for to-morrow, it not being
here yet. But _This Day_ help me to hold out." And all day long I'm
saying under my breath:

    "Hold on, Mary Cary, hold on, hold on.
    There never was a night that didn't have a dawn.
    There never was a road that didn't have an end.
    Wait awhile, wait awhile, and then the letter send."

I say that so often to myself that I'm afraid somebody will hear me
think it. If that letter isn't sent soon, the answer will be received by
a corpse.

I'm never again going to have a secret. It's worse than a tumor or
dropsy. Mrs. Penick has a tumor. I've never seen the dropsy, but a
secret is more dangerous, for it dries you up. Dropsy has water to it.

We had apple-dumplings for dinner. I sold mine to Lucy Pyle for two
cents, and bought a stamp with it. The stamp is for The Letter.

Miss Katherine has come back. Came night before last, but I've been too
excited to write anything down. Everything I do is done in dabs these
days, and few lines at the time is all I'm equal to.

She looks grand. And oh, what a difference her being here makes! We are
children, not just orphans, when she is with us; and it's because she
loves us, trusts us, brings our best part to the top that we are
different when she is about. The very way she laughs--so clear and
hearty--makes you think things aren't so bad, and already they have
picked up. Like my primrose does when I give it water, after forgetting
it till it is as limp as old Miss Sarah Cone's crêpe veil.

I haven't told her anything yet, but I've been watching good. I haven't
seen any particular signs of memories and regrets, she being too busy to
have them since she got back. Still, I believe they are there, and I'm
that afraid I'll say Parke Alden in my sleep I put the covering over my
head, for fear she'd hear me if I did.

I am back in her room, and this afternoon she asked me what I was
looking at her so hard for. I told her she was the best thing to look
at that came my way, and she laughed and called me a foolish child. But
Mary Cary is thinking, and she isn't telling all she thinks about,
either.

Well, it's written. That letter is written and gone. It was to Dr. Parke
Alden. I sent it to his hospital in Michigan. I made it short, because
by nature I write just endless, having gotten in the habit from making
up stories for the girls and scribbling them off when kept in, which in
the past was frequent. This is what I wrote:

     DR. PARKE ALDEN:

     _Dear Sir_,--Eleven weeks and two days ago I heard you did not know
     I was living. I am. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum,
     and have been living here for nine years and four months and almost
     a week. If you had known I was living all these years and had not
     made yourself acquainted with me, I would not now write you. But I
     heard, by accident, you did not know I had been born, so I am
     writing to tell you I was. It happened in Natchez, Miss. I know
     that much, but little more, except my father was an actor. I
     worship his memory. My mother was named Mary Alden, and you are her
     brother. If you would like to know more, and will write and ask me,
     I think you will learn something of interest. Not about me, but
     there are other people in this world.

     Respectfully,

     MARY CARY.

Three days have passed since I sent that letter off secret. I wouldn't
let Miss Katherine know for a billion dollars that I'd sent it, but I'm
glad I did. I'm sure she's got something in her heart she don't talk
about, for last night, when she didn't know I was looking, I saw that
same quiet proudness come in her face I saw the night of the ball.

I don't know how long it takes to go to Michigan, not knowing much about
travelling, as I've never been out of Yorkburg since I came in. But some
day I'm going around the world, and I'm going to see everything anybody
else has ever seen before I marry my children's father. Of course, after
I get married he will be busy, and there will be always some excuse that
will make you tired. I'm going beforehand. Miss Webb says marriage is
very uncertain.

This is a grand day. The crocuses are peeping up just as pert and
pretty. The little brown buds on the trees have turned green and getting
bigger every day, and even the air feels like it's had a bath. I just
love the spring. Everything says to you: "Good-morning! Here we are
again. Let's begin all over." And inside I say, "All right," and I mean
it; but oh, Mary Cary, you're so unreliable. There are times when your
future looks very much like a worm of the dust.

Miss Bray is real sick. She hasn't been well for a long time, and she
looks like she's shrivelling, though still fat. She has nervous
dyspepsia, which they say is ruinous to dispositions, and Miss Bray's
isn't the kind for any sort of sickness to be free with.

It certainly is making her queer, for she's changed from sharpness to
tearfulness, and she weeps any time. A thing I never thought I'd live to
see.

Poor creature, I feel real sorry for her. Miss Jones says she's worn
out, but I don't believe it's that. I believe it's conscience and
coffee. Miss Bray isn't an all-over bad person. If it wasn't I knew she
told stories, I could have stood the other things. But when a person
tells stories, what have you got to hold on to? Nothing.

I believe it's those stories that's giving her trouble in her stomach.
Anything on your mind does, and Miss Bray looks at me so curious and so
nervous, sometimes, that I can't help feeling sorry for her.

I don't believe she will ever get well until she repents and confesses
and crosses her heart that she won't do it again. A confession is a
grand relief.

Suppose Dr. Parke Alden don't write, don't notice me! I will be that mad
and mortified I will wish I was dead. But if he don't answer that
letter, I will write a few more things to him before dying, for, if I am
an Orphan, I oughtn't to be treated like a piece of imagination.

The black hen has got a lot of little chickens and the jonquils are in
bloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, and
Miss Katherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to make
me eat more. I don't want to eat. I want a letter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jerusalem the Golden! Now, what do you reckon has happened! Nothing will
evermore surprise Mary Cary, mostly Martha.

If the moon ever burns, or the stars come to town, or the Pope marries a
wife, or the dead come to life, I will just say, "Is that so?" and in my
heart I will know a stranger thing than that.

Yesterday Miss Bray sent for me to come to her room. She was sick in
bed, and her frizzes weren't frizzed, and she looked so old and pitiful
that I took hold of her hand and said, "I'm awful sorry you are sick,
Miss Bray."

And what did she do but begin to cry, and such a long crying I never saw
anybody have. I knew there was a lot to come out and she'd better get
rid of it, so I let it keep on without remarks, and after a while she
told me to shut the door, and get her a clean handkerchief out of her
top bureau-drawer.

I did it. Then she told me to sit down. I did that, too, and it's well I
did. If I hadn't I'd have fell. Her words would have made me.

"Mary Cary," she said, "you have given me a great deal of trouble, and
at times you've nearly worried me to death. But never since you've been
here have you ever told a story, and that's what I've done." And she put
her head down in her pillow, and I tell you she nearly shook herself,
out of bed she cried so.

I was so surprised and confused I didn't know whether I was awake or
asleep. But all of a sudden it came to me what she meant, and I put my
arms around her neck and kissed her. That's what I did, Martha or no
Martha; I kissed her. Then I said:

"Miss Bray, I'm awful glad you are sorry you did it. If you're sorry
it's like a sponge that wipes it off, and don't anybody but you and me
and God know about that particular one. And we can all forget it, if
there's never any more."

And then she cried harder than ever. Regular rivers. I didn't know the
top of your head could hold so much water.

But she said there would never be any more, for she'd never had any
peace since the way I looked at her that day, and she couldn't stand it
any longer. She didn't know why I had that effect on her, but I did, and
she'd sent for me to talk about it.

Well, we talked. I told her I didn't think just being sorry was enough,
and I asked her how sorry was she.

"I don't know," she said, and then she began on tears again, so I
thought I'd better be quick while the feeling lasted.

"Well, you know, Miss Bray," I began, "Pinkie Moore hasn't been adopted
yet. She never will be while the ladies think what you told them is
true. You ought to write a letter to the Board and tell them what you
said wasn't so."

"I can't!" she said; and then more fountains flowed. "I can't tell them
I told a story!"

"But that's what you did," I said. "And when you've done a mean thing,
there isn't but one way to undo it--own up and take what comes. But it's
nothing to a conscience that's got you, and is never going to let you go
until you do the square thing. If you want peace, it's the only way to
get it."

"But I can't write a letter; I'm so nervous I couldn't compose a line."
And you never would have known her voice. It was as quavery as old
Doctor Fleury's, the Methodist preacher who's laid off from work.

"I'll write it for you." And I hopped for the things in her desk. "You
can copy it when you feel better." And, don't you know, she let me do
it! After three tryings I finished it, then read it out loud:

     DEAR LADIES,--If any one applies for Pinkie Moore, I hope you will
     let her go. Pinkie is the best and most useful girl in the Asylum.
     More than two years ago I said differently. It was wrong in me, and
     Pinkie isn't untruthful. She hasn't a bad temper, and never in her
     life took anything that didn't belong to her. I am sorry I said
     what I did. She don't know it and never will, and I hope you will
     forgive me for saying it.

     Respectfully,

     MOLLIE E. BRAY.

When I was through she cried still harder, and said she'd lose her
place. She knew she would. I told her she wouldn't. I knew she wouldn't.
And after a while she sat up in bed and copied it. Some of her tears
blotted it, but I told her that didn't matter, and when I got up to go
she looked better already.

I knew how she felt. Like I did when my tooth that had to come out was
out. And a thing on your mind is worse than the toothache. One you can
tell, the other you can't. A thing you can't tell is like a spook that's
always behind you, and right in the bed with you when you wake up
sudden, and lies down with you every time you go to sleep. I know, for
that letter is on my mind.

When I got out of Miss Bray's room I ran in mine, Miss Katherine being
out, and locked the door, and I said:

"Mary Martha Cary, don't ever say again there's no such things as modern
miracles. There's been a miracle to-day, and you have seen it. Somebody
has been born over." And then, because I couldn't help it, I cried
almost as bad as Miss Bray.

But, oh, nobody can ever know how much harm it had done me to believe a
lady could go through life telling stories, and doing mean,
dishonorable things, and not minding. And people treating her just the
same as if she were honest!

When I found out it wasn't so--that your sin did make you suffer, and
that it did make a difference trying to do right--I felt some of my old
Martha-ry scornfulness slipping away. And I got down on my knees, no
words, but God understanding why.

I don't like any kind of bitterness in my heart. I'd rather like people.
But can you like a deceiver? You can't.

Dr. Parke Alden has taken no more notice of me than if I were a
Juney-bug.

I wonder if Miss Katherine will ever marry. She wasn't meant to live in
an Orphan Asylum. She was meant to be the Lady of the House, and to wear
beautiful clothes, and have horses and carriages and children of her
own, and to give orders. Instead of that, she is here; but sometimes she
has a look on her face which I call "Waiting." Last week I wrote a poem
about it. This is it:

    "In the winter, by the fireside, when the snow falls soft and white,
    I am waiting, hoping, longing, but for what I don't know quite.
    And when summer's sunshine shimmers, and the birds sing clear and sweet,
    I am waiting, always waiting, for the joy I hope to meet.

    It will be, I think, my husband, and the home he'll make for me;
    But of his coming or home-making, I as yet no signs do see.
    But I still shall keep on waiting, for I know it's true as fate,
    When you really, truly hustle, things will come if just you'll wait."

I don't think much of that. It sounds like "Dearest Willie, thou hast
left us, and thy loss we deeply feel." But I wasn't meant for a poet any
more than Miss Katherine for an old maid.

Dr. Parke Alden must be dead. Either that or he's no gentleman, or he
didn't get my letter. I wish I hadn't written it. I wish I hadn't let
him know I was living. But it was Miss Katherine I was thinking about.
Thank Heaven, I didn't mention her name! He isn't worth thinking about,
and I think of nothing else.



XIII

HIS COMING


If I could get out on the roof and shake hands with the stars, or dance
with the man in the moon, I might be able to write it down; but
everything in me is bubbling and singing so, I can't keep still to
write. But I'm bound to put down that he's come. He's come!

He came day before yesterday morning about ten o'clock. I was in the
school-room, and Mrs. Blamire opened the door and looked in. "Mary Cary
can go to the parlor," she said. "Some one wishes to see her."

I got up and went out, not dreaming who it was, as I was only looking
for a letter; and there, standing by a window with his back to me, was a
man, and in a minute I knew.

I couldn't move, and I couldn't speak, and Lot's wife wasn't any stiller
than I was.

But he heard me come in, and turned, and, oh! it is so strange how
right at once you know some things. And the thing I knew was it was all
true. That he'd never known about me until he got my letter. For a
minute he just looked at me. We didn't either of us say a word, and then
he came toward me and held out his hands.

"Mary Cary," he said. And the first thing I knew I was crying fit to
break my heart, with my arms around his neck, and he holding me tight in
his. His eyes were wet, too. They were. I saw them. He kissed me about
fifty times--though maybe not more than twenty--and I had such a strange
feeling I didn't know whether I was in my body or not. It was the first
time that any one who was really truly my own had ever come to see me
since I'd been an Orphan, and every bit of sense I ever had rolled away
like the Red Sea waters. Rolled right away.

I don't remember what happened next. Everything is a jumble of so many
kinds of joys that I've been crazy all day. But I wasn't too crazy to
see the look on his face, I mean on my Uncle Dr. Parke Alden's face,
when he saw Miss Katherine coming across the front yard. We were
standing by the window, and as he saw her he looked again, as if he
didn't see good, and then his face got as white as whitewash. He took
out his handkerchief and wiped his lips and his forehead that were real
perspiring, and I almost danced for joy, for I knew in his secret,
secret heart she was his sweetheart still. But I didn't move even a toe.
I just said:

"That's Miss Katherine Trent. She's the trained nurse here. Did you know
her when she lived in Yorkburg?"

And he said yes, he knew her. Just that, and nothing else. But I knew,
and for fear I'd tell him I knew, I flew out of the room like I was
having a fit, and met Miss Katherine coming in the front door.

"Miss Katherine," I said, "there's a friend of yours in the parlor who
wants to see you. Will you go in?"

She walked in, just as natural, humming a little tune, and I walked
behind her, for I wanted to see it. I will never be as ready for glory
as I was that minute. I could have folded my hands and sailed up, but I
didn't sail. It's well I didn't, for they didn't meet at all like I
expected, and I was so surprised I just said, "Well, sir!" and sat right
down on the floor and looked up at them.

They didn't see me. They didn't see anything but each other; but if
they'd had the smallpox they couldn't have kept farther apart, just
bowing formal, and not even offering to shake hands.

My, I was set on! I didn't think they'd meet that way; but Miss Becky
Cole, who's kinder crazy, says God Almighty don't know what a woman is
going to do or when she's going to do it. Miss Katherine proved it. She
didn't fool me, though, with all her quietness and coolness. I knew her
heart was beating as hard as mine, and I jumped up and said:

"I think you all have been waiting long enough to make up, and it's no
use wasting any more time." And I flew out, slamming the door tight, and
shut them in.

I don't know what happened after I shut that door. But, oh, he's grand!
He is thirty-six, and big and splendid. He and Miss Katherine are in the
parlor now. Miss Jones says everybody in Yorkburg knows he's here, and
all talking. All!

I've been so excited since the first day he came that I've had little
sense. But my natural little is coming back, and I'm trying not to talk
too much. Of course, I had to say a good deal, because everybody had to
know how it happened that Doctor Alden came back to Yorkburg so suddenly
after thirteen years' being away. And why he hadn't been before, and
what he came for and when he was going away, and if he were going to
take me with him.

And then everybody remembered how he and Miss Katherine used to be
sweethearts when they were young. I tell you, the talking that's been
going on in Yorkburg in the last few days would fill a barrel of books.
By the end of the week a whole lot more will be known about Uncle Parke
than he knows about himself. If Yorkburg had a coat of arms it ought to
be a question-mark.

They've had time to talk over everything that ever happened since Adam
and Eve left Paradise, in the long walks they take, and in the evenings
when he calls, which he does as regular as night comes. And now I'm
waiting for the news. I'll have to be so surprised. And I guess I will
be. Love does very surprising things.

Miss Katherine knew where Uncle Parke was all the time. She knew who I
was, too; that is, she found out after she nursed me at the hospital.
But what that fuss was about I don't know. Nothing much, I reckon; but
the more you love a person the madder you can get with them. And from
foolishness they've wasted years and years of together-ness.

But it's all explained now, and I don't think there's going to be any
more nonsense. They are going to be married as sure as my name isn't in
a bank-book; and if signs are anything, it's going to be soon.

Miss Bray is better, though she looks pretty bad still. She's been
awfully excited about Uncle Parke's coming, and she says she hears he's
very distinguished and real rich. Isn't it strange how quick some people
hear about riches? I don't know anything of his having any. He hasn't
mentioned money to me; but oh, I feel so safe with him! He's so strong
and quiet and easy in his manners, and he's been so splendid and
beautiful to me. He don't use many words. Just makes you understand.

I wonder what a man says to a lady when he wants her to marry him? I
know Dr. Parke Alden isn't the kind to get down on his knees. If he
were, Miss Katherine would certainly tell him to get up and say what he
had to say standing, or sitting, if it took long. But I'll never know
what he said. They're not the kind to tell; but they can't hide Love.
It's just like the sun. It can't help shining.

       *       *       *       *       *

Land of Nippon, I'm excited! I believe he's said it!

The reason I think so is, I saw them late yesterday evening coming in
from a long walk down the Calverton road, where there's a beautiful
place for courters. When they got to the gate they stopped and talked
and talked. Then he walked to the door with her, still holding his hat
in his hand, and though it was dark I could feel something different. I
was so nervous you would have thought I was the one.

I was over by the lilacs; but they didn't see me. I didn't like to move.
It might have been ruinous, so I held my breath and waited.

When they got to the door they stopped again, and presently he held out
his hand to say good-bye. The way he did it, the way he looked at her
made me just know, and I got right down on my knees under the
lilac-bush, and when he'd gone I sang, "Praise God, from whom all
blessings flow." Sang it loud.

I didn't care who heard. I wasn't telling why I was thankful. Just
telling I was. Oh, Mary Martha Cary, to think of her being your really,
truly Aunt! The very next thing to a mother!



XIV

THE HURT OF HAPPINESS


I wouldn't like to put on paper how I feel to-day. Uncle Parke has gone.
Gone back to Michigan. I'm such a mixture of feelings that I don't know
which I've got the most of, gladness or sadness or happiness or
miserableness, and I'd rather cry as much as I want than have as much
ice-cream as I could hold.

But I'm not going to cry. I don't like cryers, and, besides, I haven't a
place to do it in private. I wouldn't let Miss Katherine see me, not if
I died of choking. I ought to be rejoicing, and I am; but the female
heart is beyond understanding, Miss Becky Cole says, and it is. Mine is.
I could die of thankfulness, but I'd like first to cry as much as I
could if I let go.

They are engaged. Uncle Parke and Miss Katherine are, and they are to be
married on the twenty-seventh of June. That's my birthday. I will be
thirteen on the twenty-seventh of June.

They told me about it night before last. I was out on the porch, and
Miss Katherine called me and told me she and Doctor Alden wanted me to
go to walk with them. I knew what was coming. Knew in a flash. But I
pretended not to, and thanked her ever so much, and told her I'd just
love to go.

We walked on down to the Calverton road, talking about nothing, and
making out it was our usual night walk, but when we got to the seven
maples Uncle Parke stopped.

"Suppose we sit down," he said. "It's too warm to walk far to-night."
And after we sat he threw his hat on the ground, then leaned over and
took my hands in his.

"Mary Cary," he began. And though his eyes were smiling, his voice was
real quivering. I was noticing, and it was. "Mary Cary, Katherine and I
have brought you with us to-night to ask if you have any objection to
our being married. We would like to do so as soon as possible--if you do
not object."

He turned my face to his, and the look in his eyes was grand. It meant
no matter who objected, marry her he would; but it was a way to tell
me--the way he was asking, and I understood.

"It depends," I said, and, as I am always playing parts to myself, right
on the spot I was a chaperon lady. "It depends on whether you love
enough. Do you?"

"I do. For myself I am entirely sure. As to Katherine--Suppose she tells
you what she thinks."

I turned toward her. "Do you, Miss Katherine? It takes--I guess it takes
a lot of love to stand marriage. Do you think you have enough?"

In the moonlight her face changed like her opal ring when the cream
becomes pink and the pink red.

"I think there is," she said. Then: "Oh, Mary Cary, why are you such a
strange, strange child?" And she threw her arms around me and kissed me
twenty times.

After a while, after we'd talked and talked, and they'd told me things
and I'd told them things, I said I'd consent.

"But if the love ever gives out, I'm not going to stay with you," I
said. "I'm never going to be fashionable and not care for love. A home
without it is hell."

"Mercy, Mary!" Uncle Parke jumped. "Don't use such strong language. It
isn't nice."

"But it's true. I read it in a book, and I've watched the Rices. When
there's love enough you can stand anything. When there isn't, you can
stand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn't
know, and love can't keep still. It's got to grow or die."

Then I jumped up. "I always could talk a lot about things I didn't
understand," I said. "But I consent." And I flew down the road and left
them.

I've written it out on a piece of paper, about their being engaged, and
looked at it by night and by day since they told me about it. I've said
it low, and I've said it loud, but I can't realize it, and the little
sense the Lord gave me He has taken away.

They say I did it. Say I'm responsible for every bit of it, and that I
will have to look after them all the rest of their lives to see that I
didn't make a mistake in writing that letter. And that I'm to go to
Europe with them on their wedding tour and live with them always and
always. And--oh!--I believe my heart is going to burst with miserable
happiness and happy miserableness, and my head feels like it's in a
bag.

Dr. Parke Alden and Miss Katherine Trent are the two nicest people on
earth, and the two I love best. But I don't think they know all the time
what they are doing and saying. They are that in love they don't see but
one side--the happy side--and they think I am going to leave this place
with a skip and a jump and run along by them, third person, single
number, and not know I'm in the way.

They won't even listen when I tell them I don't know what I'm going to
do. I know what I want to do! Everything in me gets into shivering
trembleness when I think I could go to Europe with them on their wedding
trip. Think of it! Mary Cary could go to E-U-R-O-P-E!

They've invited me and say I'm to go, because I'm never to leave them
any more, and they want me. But it isn't so. Mary tries to believe it's
so, but Martha knows it isn't. They think they think they want me, but
they don't; nobody wants an outsider on a wedding tour, and I'm not
going. I can't help it. Come on, tears! Even angels sometimes cry aloud;
and, not being a step-relation to one, I'm going to let Mary cry if she
wants to. Sometimes Martha is real hard on Mary.

There is no use studying Human Nature. You can't study a thing that
changes by day and by night, and is so uncertain you never know what it
is going to do. Now, here is Mary Cary, mostly Martha, who would rather
get on a train or a boat and go somewhere--she don't care where--than to
do any other thing on earth. Who has never seen anything and wants to
see everything, and who, if anyone had told her a year ago she could go
to New York, and then to Europe, would have slid down every flight of
stairs head foremost from pure joy. And now she has the chance, she is
not going. She is Not.

She hasn't much sense, Mary Cary hasn't, but enough to know wedding
trips are personal, and, besides, the girls have turned into regular
weepers. Every time anything is said about going away their eyes water
up, and Martha feels like a yellow dog with no tail. I know they hate
Miss Katherine's going; but why do they cry about my going? Lord, this
is a strange place to live in, this world is! I wonder what heaven will
be like?

Miss Bray is much better. She says Uncle Parke has cured her. I don't
believe it. I believe it was Relief of the Mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

I wasn't meant to be a sad person. I was silly sad the other day; but
I've found out when anything bothers you very much, it helps to take it
out and look at it. Walk all around it, poke it and see if it's sure
enough, and, if it isn't, tell it you'll see it dead before you'll let
it do you that way.

That's what I did with what was making me doleful, and now I'm all right
again. It was because I did want to go to Europe awful, and it twisted
my heart like a machine had it when I turned my back on the chance. And
then, too, it was because the girls begged me so not to go away for good
that I got so worried.

They said it wouldn't be the same if I wasn't here, and though they
didn't blame me, they begged me so not to go that I got as addled as the
old black hen that hatched ducks.

Now, did you ever hear of such a thing? As if it really mattered where
Mary Cary lived! I didn't know anybody truly cared, and finding out made
me light in the head. But I know that's just passing--their caring, I
mean. I'm much obliged; but they'll forget it in a little while, and I
will be just a memory.

I hope it will be bright. There's so much dark you can't help that a
brightness is real enjoyable. They say what you look for you see, and
what you want to forget you mustn't remember. There are a lot of things
about my Orphan life I'm going to try to forget. But there are some that
for the sake of sense, and in case of airs, I had better bear in mind. I
guess Martha will see to those. Whenever Mary gives signs of soaring,
Martha brings her straight back to earth. Martha doesn't care for
soarers, and she has a terrible bad habit of letting them know she
don't.

Yorkburg hasn't settled down yet, and is still hanging on to the last
remnants of the surprise about Uncle Parke's coming, and about his
marriage to Miss Katherine and my going away.

Of course, Miss Amelia Cokeland wanted to know if he'd made the Asylum a
present, and how much. At first nobody would tell her. She's got such a
ripping curiosity that there isn't a sneeze sneezed in Yorkburg, or a
cake baked, or a door shut that she doesn't want to know why. But maybe
she can't help it. Some people are natural inquirers, and that's the
way she makes her living, telling the news.

She used to work buttonholes, but since she can't see good she just
spends the day out and tells all she hears. Nobody really likes her, but
her tongue is too sharp to fool with. To keep from being talked about,
everybody pretends to be friendly.

I don't. She shook her finger at me once because I wouldn't tell her
what was in Miss Katherine's letter the first time she went away, and
since then she's never noticed me until Uncle Parke came. Now every time
I see her she's awful pleasant, and tries to make me talk. But a finger
once shook is shook. I don't talk.

But Uncle Parke did make the Asylum a present. He didn't tell me,
neither did Miss Katherine, and I don't think he wanted anybody but the
Board ladies to know. But, of course, they couldn't keep it secret. They
told their husbands, and that meant the town. Nothing but a dead man
could keep from talking about money.

It must have been a lot he gave, for Peelie Duke told me she heard Mrs.
Carr and Mrs. Dent talking about it the day she took some apple-jelly
for Miss Jones over to little Jessie Carr, who was sick.

"He could have kept her at a fashionable boarding-school from the day
she was born until now for the sum he's turned over to the Board," said
Mrs. Carr, and her eyes, which are the beaming kind, just danced, Peelie
said.

"Well, he ought to," grunted Mrs. Dent, who talks like her tongue was
down her throat. "He ought to! We've been taking care of the child for
almost ten years. I hear he wants the house put in good condition, a new
dining-room and kitchen built and four bath-rooms. The rest is to go to
the endowment. I think more ought to go to the endowment and less for
these luxuries. I don't approve of them. An Orphan Asylum is not a
hotel."

"No, but it ought to be a home, if possible," said Mrs. Carr, and Peelie
said she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven her
husband stood her all the time.

I certainly am glad to know I'm paid for. Some day, when I'm grown and
earning my own living, before I marry my children's father, I am going
to give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Parke. Of course
that will be some time off, and until then I'll just have to try to be
a nice person.

Miss Katherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to have
a nice person in the house with them--one of those cheerful, sunshiny
kind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they fall
down. As I can't earn money yet, I'm going to try to be something like
that, so they won't be sorry I ever was born. Uncle Parke and Miss
Katherine won't.

But isn't it strange, when the time comes for you to do a thing you are
crazy to do, you wish it hadn't come?

There have been days when I hated this Asylum. I've felt at times that I
was just one of the numbers of the multiplication table, and in all my
life I'd never be anything else. And I'd almost sweep the bricks up out
of the yard, I'd be so mad to think I was nothing and nobody.

I wanted to be something and somebody. I didn't want to die and be
forgotten. I would have liked to sit on St. John's Church steeple and
have everybody look at me and say:

"That's Mary Cary! She's great and rich, and gives away lots of money
and sings like an angel." That's what I once would have liked, but I've
learned a few things since I didn't know then.

One is that high places are lonely and hard and uncomfortable, and
people who have sat on them have sometimes wished they didn't. Miss
Katherine told me that herself, also that the place you're in is pretty
near what you're fitted to fill. Otherwise you'd get out and fill
another.

I've given up steeples and superiorities. But I'm glad I'm not going to
be an orphan, just an orphan, all my life. I'm glad; still, when I think
of going away and leaving everybody and everything: the old pump, where
I drowned my first little chicken washing it; and the old mulberry-tree,
where my first doll was buried; and the garret, where I made up
ghost-stories for the girls on rainy days; and the school-room; and even
No. 4--when I think of these things, I could be like that man in the
Bible (I believe it was David, but it might have been Jonah), I could
lift up my voice and weep.

But I'm not going to. Weepers are a nuisance.

I guess that's the way with life, though. When things are going, you
try to hold them back. And if you got them, you'd maybe wish you hadn't.

That's the way Mrs. Gaines did when her husband died. I mean when he
didn't die that first time. She thought he was going to, and so did
everybody else. He had Fright's disease, and it affected his heart,
being liable to take him off any time, and Mrs. Gaines just carried on
terrible.

She had faintings and hysterics, and said she couldn't live without him,
though everybody in Yorkburg knew she could, and easy enough. He without
her, too, had she gone first. She had asthma and an outbreaking temper,
and he drank.

Mrs. Mosby--she's the doctor's wife--said she didn't blame him. No man
could stand Mrs. Gaines all the time without something to help, and
everybody hoped when he got so ill that he'd die and have a little rest.
But he didn't. He got better.

Mrs. Gaines was so surprised she was downright disagreeable about it,
and how he stood it was a wonder. He didn't long, for the next summer he
was dead sure enough, and Mrs. Gaines put on the longest crêpe veil ever
seen in the South, she said. It touched the hem of her skirt in front
and behind; but she cut it in half after everybody had seen it often
enough to know how long it was.

If Augustus Gaines thought she was going to ruin her eyes and choke her
lungs by wearing unhealthy crêpe over her face he thought wrong, she
said, and in a few months it was gone and she was as gay as a girl.
She's what they call a character, Mrs. Gaines is.

I don't want to be like her, and I don't expect to do any groaning over
leaving Yorkburg. I want to live with Uncle Parke and Miss Katherine,
and I'm going to. But it's strange how many happy things hurt.



XV

A REAL WEDDING


It looks as if everybody who knows Miss Katherine wants her to be
married from their house. Her brothers want her to be married from
theirs. Her aunt, Mrs. Powhatan Bloodgood, who lives in Loudon County,
and whose husband is as rich as a real lord, begs her to be married in
hers; and everybody in Yorkburg--I mean the coat-of-arms
everybodies--has invited her to have the wedding in their home.

But she just smiles and says no to them all. Says she is going to be
married from her house, which is the Orphan Asylum, though the ceremony
will be at the church. It's going to be in the morning at twelve
o'clock, so they can take the two-o'clock train for Richmond and go on
to New York.

Miss Katherine wants it to be quiet, but it can't be quiet. There's
nothing on human legs that can use them who won't be at the church to
see that wedding take place.

Everybody has been paying her a lot of attention of late. It's real
strange what a difference a man makes in a marriage, even if he isn't
noticed much in person at the time. If he's rich and prominent,
everybody is so pleasant and sociable you'd think they were real
intimate. If he's just good and poor, few take notice.

When Miss Vickie Toones married Mr. Joe Blake they didn't get hardly any
presents. They had a lot of dead relations who used to be rich and
haughty, but their living ones are as poor as the people they didn't
used to know, and hardly anybody gave them anything handsome.

Miss Katherine's presents are just amazing, and my eyes are blistered by
the shine of them. I didn't know before such things were in the world.
People say Uncle Parke has made a lot of money in some mines out West,
besides being a doctor, and that he doesn't have to work. "But a man who
doesn't work hasn't any excuse for living," I heard him tell somebody,
and maybe it's so, though I don't know.

I don't know anything these days. I'm the shape and size of Mary Cary,
but I see and hear so many things I never saw and heard before that I'd
like to borrow a dog to see if he knows whether I am myself or somebody
else. And another thing I'd like to find out is, How do other people
know so much?

Mrs. Philip Creekmore has a cousin whose wife's brother lives in the
same place Uncle Parke does, and Miss Amelia Cokeland wrote out there
and found out all about him. But it doesn't matter whether she truly
knows anything or not. Miss Webb says she is like those fish scientists.
Give her one bone, and she can tell you all the rest. She's had a grand
time telling more things about Uncle Parke than Miss Katherine will ever
learn in this world.

My dress is finished. I'm to be Maiden of Honor. There are no
bridesmaids. Think of it! Me, Mary Cary, once just flesh and blood
mechanical, now a living creature who is to wear a white Swiss dress and
a sash with pink rosebuds on it, and walk up the church aisle with my
arms full of roses. And--magnificent gloriousness! most beautiful of
all!--every girl in this Asylum is to have a white dress and a sash the
color she likes best to wear to the wedding. That's my wedding gift to
the girls. Uncle Parke gave it to me.

Miss Katherine's California brother and his wife have come. I don't like
them. He looks bored to death, and chews the end of his mustache till
you wonder there's any left. As for her, she's the limit. Maybe that's
what's the matter with him.

She seems to be afraid some of us might touch her, and she stares as if
we were figures in a china-shop. No more says good-morning than if we
were.

She wears seven rings on one hand and four on another, and rustles so
when she walks she sounds like a churner out of order. If she isn't a
bulgarian born, she's bought herself into being one, for she oozes
money. It's the only thing you think of when she's around. You can
actually smell it. I think Miss Katherine is sorry they came. She don't
say it, of course, but plenty of things don't have to be said.

Uncle Parke came last night, bringing his best friend and some others.
The best one is Doctor Willwood. He's fine. He and I are going to come
down the aisle together. I reach up to his elbow, and he says he may put
me in his pocket. I wish he would. I know I will be that frightened I'd
be glad to get in it.

He wants to know all about Yorkburg and the people, and to-day Miss Bray
let me take him all around the town and show him the antiquities. He
asked her. I had on the white dress Miss Katherine gave me last summer,
and I looked real nice, for I had on my company manners, too.

You see, he was from the West, and had never been to Virginia before;
and when a man comes such a long way, one ought to put on company
manners and be extra polite. It wouldn't be right not to. I put mine on,
and I guess I did do a lot of talking. I'm by nature a talker, just like
I can't help skipping when my heart is happy and nothing hurts.

I told him about all the places we came to, and about who lived in them,
except the Alden house which the Reagans now possess. When we got there
he stopped in front of it.

"My!" he said, "that's a beautiful old place! Whose is it?"

"Some people by the name of Reagan live there," I said. "I don't know
them." And I started on.

I came near forgetting, and saying, "That is Alden house, where my
grandfather used to live," but I remembered in time. I don't acknowledge
my grandfather, and I knew somebody else would tell him Uncle Parke was
born and lived there until he went West.

We had a grand time. We stayed out over four hours, and I forgot all
about dinner. He didn't want to go in when I suddenly remembered and
told him I must, and then he said I was going to take dinner with him at
the Colonial. He'd asked Miss Bray, and it was all right. And that's
what I did. Took dinner with him at the Colonial!

I tell you, Mary Martha Cary had what you could truly call a Time. And
Doctor Willwood said he never had enjoyed a morning in his life like
that one. Laugh? I never heard a man laugh so hearty. Half the time I
couldn't tell why. I'd be real serious, but he'd look at me and almost
die laughing. I bet I said some things I oughtn't, but I don't remember,
and I couldn't take them back if I did.

       *       *       *       *       *

It's over. The wedding is over. Everything is after a while in this
life, even death; and time is the only thing that keeps on just the
same.

They're gone. Gone on their bridal tour, and the happiness that's left
Yorkburg would run a family for a long life. I wish everybody could have
seen that wedding. It's going to be long remembered, for the earth and
sky, and birds and flowers, and trees and sunshine all took part.
Everything tried to help, and as for blessings on them, they took away
enough for the human race. But now it's over I feel like my first
balloon looked when I stuck a pin in it to see what would happen. I saw.

I had a telegram from them to-day. It said:

     We sail at eleven o'clock. Love to all, and hearts full for Mary
     Cary.

     UNCLE PARKE and AUNT KATHERINE.

Well, she's my Aunt now. That's fixed, anyhow, and the marriage that
fixed it was a beauty. Every bird in Yorkburg was singing, every flower
was blooming, and every heart was blessing; and when those fifty-eight
orphans walked in, all in white and two by two, every hand was dropping
roses. And that is what each girl was wishing: Roses, roses all her
life!

After the ushers, I came in all alone by myself; that is, my shape did.
Mary was really inside the altar looking at me coming up slow and easy,
and Martha was ordering me to keep step to the music. "All right, I'm
doing my best," I was saying to both. And I was, but I was thankful when
I got to where I could stop, for my legs were so excited I wouldn't have
been surprised if they'd turned and run out.

Behind me came Miss Katherine, on her Army brother's arm. He's as nice
as the other isn't. He hasn't got the money-making disease. When Uncle
Parke and Doctor Willwood came out of the vestry-room Uncle Parke gave
me one look, just one, but it was so understanding I winked back, and
then he came farther down and stood by Miss Katherine like she was his
until kingdom come, forever more. Amen.

Then the minister began, and the music was so soft you could hear the
birds outside. The breeze through the window blew right on Miss
Katherine's veil, and I was so busy watching it I didn't know the time
had come to pray, and I hardly got my head bent before I had to take it
up again. Then the minister was through, and I was walking down the
aisle with Doctor Willwood, and in just about two minutes more we were
back at the Asylum, and it was all over--the thing we'd been looking
forward to so long.

The Asylum looked real nice that morning. There were bushels and bushels
of flowers in it, for everybody in town who had any sent them. Flowers
cover a multitude of poverties. The reception was grand. That California
Richness called it a breakfast, but that was pure style. Yorkburg don't
have breakfast between twelve and one, and everybody else called it a
reception. As for the people at it, there were more kinds than were ever
in one dining-room before; and every single one had a good time. Every
one.

You see, Miss Katherine, besides being who she was, was what she was.
Having known a great deal about all sorts of people since being a nurse,
and finding out that the plain and the fancy, the rich and the poor,
those who've had a chance and those who haven't, are a heap more alike
than people think, she said she was going to invite to her wedding
whoever she wanted. And she did.

There wasn't one invited who didn't come: the bent and the broke and the
blind (that's true, for old Mr. Forbes is bent, and Mrs. Rowe's hip was
broken and she uses crutches, and Bobbie Anderson is blind); and the
old, that's the high-born coat-of-arms kind; and the new, that's the
Reagans and Hinchmans and some others, and Mr. Pinkert the shoemaker,
who, she says, is a gentleman if he don't remember his grandfather's
name; and Miss Ginnie Grant, who made her underclothes--all were there.
All. It was a different wedding from any that was ever before in
Yorkburg, and if any feelings were hurt it was because they were trying
to be. Some feelings are kept for that purpose.

Of course, Mrs. Christopher Pryor had remarks to make. "Katherine always
was too independent," I heard her tell Miss Queechy Spence. "But I don't
believe in anything of the kind. If you once let people get out of the
place they were born in, there'll be no doing anything with them. You
mark me, if this wedding don't make trouble. Some of these people will
expect to be invited to my house next." And she took another helping of
salad that was enough for three. She's an awful eater.

"Oh no, they won't," said Miss Queechy. "They know better than to expect
anything like that of you," and she gave me a little wink and walked off
with Mr. Morris, who's her beau. I went off, too. It isn't safe for
Martha Cary to be too near Mrs. Pryor, for Mary never knows what she
may do.

And, oh, you ought to have seen Miss Bray! She was stepsister to the
Queen of Sheba. Solomon never had a wife arrayed like she was on that
twenty-seventh day of June. I believe she is engaged to Doctor Rudd. I
really do.

You see, after people got over teasing him about that make-believe
wedding, he got to thinking about her. He's bound to know he isn't much
of a man, and no young girl would have him, so lately he's been ambling
'round Miss Bray. If he can stand her, he'll do well to get her. She's a
grand manager on little.

He was at the wedding, too. His beard was flowinger and redder, and the
part in the back of his head shininger than ever. He had an elegant
time. He was so full of himself you would have thought it was his own
party.

Uncle Parke and Aunt Katherine have been on the ocean three days. I
wonder if they are sick. I don't think I will go to Europe with my
children's father. I was seasick once on land, and there wasn't a human
being I even liked that day. It would be bad to find out so soon that
the very sight of your husband makes you ill. After you know him
better, you could tell him to go off somewhere; but at first I suppose
you have to be polite.

They were awful nice about wanting me to go with them. The bride and
groom were. They said I had to, and they were so surprised when I said I
couldn't that they didn't think I meant it. When they found out I did,
they were dreadfully worried, and didn't know what to do next. There
wasn't anything to do, and here I am. Here I'm going to be, too, until
the first day of October, when they will be back, and we will start for
the West, for Michigan.

I'm going to like Michigan. I've decided before I get there. I know
there will be something to like, there always is in every place and
every person, Miss Katherine says, if you just will see it instead of
the all wrong. I was by nature born critical. There are a lot of things
I don't like in this world, but there's no use in mentioning them. As
for opinions, if they're not pleasant they'd better be kept to yourself.
I learned that early in life and forget it every day.

I'm going to try and think Michigan is a grand place, and next to
Virginia the best to live in. They couldn't, _couldn't_ expect me to
think it was like Virginia!

Perhaps, after a while, Uncle Parke may come back. For over two hundred
years his people have lived here, and sometimes I believe he feels just
like that dog did who had his call in him. The call of the place that
the first dogs came from, that wild, free place, and I think Uncle Parke
wants to come back, wants to be with his own people.

Out West is very convenient, though, Peggy Green says. She has an aunt
who used to live out there, and she told her you could do as you choose
in almost everything. If husbands and wives didn't like each other,
there was no trouble in getting new ones. They could get a divorce and
marry somebody else.

I wonder what a divorce is. We've never had one in Yorkburg, and I never
knew until the other day that when you got married it wasn't really
truly permanent. I thought it was for ever and ever and until death
parted. The prayer-book says so, and I thought it meant it.

By the time I'm grown I guess I'll find a lot of things are said and not
meant. Maybe when I find out I will be all the gladder to come back to
Yorkburg, where people don't seem to know much about these new-fashioned
things. Where they still believe in the old ones, and just live on and
don't hurry, and are kind and polite and dear, if they are slow and
queer and proud a little bit.

It makes me have such a funny feeling in my throat when I think about
going away. I'm trying not to think. But I do. Think all the time. I
want this summer to be the happiest the children ever had. It's the last
for me. That sounds consumptive, but I don't mean that way. I mean it's
my last Orphan summer.

Of course, I'm glad, awful glad; but I'm so sorry the other children
aren't going, too. For them it's prunes and blue-and-white calico to
look forward to until they're eighteen. Year in and year out, prunes and
calico.

But maybe it isn't. If Mary Cary will do her part something nicer may
happen. She doesn't know yet the way to make it happen, having nothing
much to send back but love. Somebody says love finds the way. Oh, Mary
Cary, you and Love _must_ find a way!

THE END





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