MARY CARY_"FREQUENTLY MARTHA"_

BYKate Langley Bosher

FRONTISPIECE BYFRANCES ROGERS

NEW YORKGROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS

Published By Arrangement With Harper & Brothers

COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY HARPER & BROTHERSPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TOVIRGINIA

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" 70VIII. MARY CARY'S BUSINESS 75 IX. LOVE IS BEST 85 X. THE REAGAN BALL 97 XI. FINDING OUT 103 XII. A TRUE MIRACLE 120XIII. 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. Youmay think nothing happens in an Orphan Asylum. It does. The orphans aresure enough children, and real much like the kind that have Mothers andFathers; 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 ratherwatch the lightning up here than be down in the basement with theothers. There are days when I love thunder and lightning. I can't flashand crash, being just Mary Cary; but I'd like to, and when it is donefor me it is a relief to my feelings. 

The reason I was kept in was this. Yesterday Mr. Gaffney, the one witha sunk eye and cold in his head perpetual, came to talk to us for thebenefit of our characters. He thinks it's his duty, and, just naturallyloving to talk, he wears us out once a week anyhow. Yesterday, notagreeing with what he said, I wouldn't pretend I did, and I was punishedprompt, of course. 

I don't care for duty-doers, and I tried not to listen to him; buttiresome 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 wascastor-oil and I had swallowed him, he blew his nose and said:

"You have much, my children, to be thankful for, and for everything youshould be thankful. Are you? If so, stand up. Rise, and stand upon yourfeet. "

I didn't rise. All the others did--stood on their feet, just like heasked. None tried their heads. I was the only one that sat, and when hesaw me, his sunk eye almost rolled out, and his good eye stared at me insuch astonishment that I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it, I trulycouldn't. 

I'm not thankful for everything, and that's why I didn't stand up. Canyou be thankful for toothache, or stomachache, or any kind of ache? Youcannot. 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 meanto say you have not a thankful heart?" And he pointed his finger at melike 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 realred-in-the-face mad--"do I understand you are not thankful for all thatcomes to you? Do I understand aright?"

"Yes, sir, you understand right, " I said, getting up this time. "I amnot thankful for everything in my life. I'd be much thankfuller to havea Mother and Father on earth than to have them in heaven. And there area great many other things I would like different. " And down I sat, andwas kept in for telling the truth. 

Miss Bray says it was for impertinence (Miss Bray is the Head Chief ofthis 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-dayMiss Bray kept me in for putting something on the blackboard I forgot torub out. I wrote it just for my own relief, not thinking about anybodyelse 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 thatwhat I wrote is right. It's crazy to let people know you know how queerthey are. Miss Bray takes personal everything I do, and when she sawthat blackboard, up-stairs she ordered me at once. She loves to punishme, 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 knowthis, or my punishment would take some other form. 

I just love a diary. You see, its something you can tell things to andnot get in trouble. When writing in it I can relieve my feelings bysaying what I think, which Miss Katherine says is risky to do topeople, and that it's safer to keep your feelings to yourself. Peopledon't really care about them, and there's nothing they get so tired ofhearing about. A diary doesn't talk, neither do animals; but a diaryunderstands better than animals, and you can call things by their rightname 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 andMother on earth than to have them in heaven, but I guess I should havekept my preferences to myself. Somehow preferences seem to make peoplemad. 

But a Mother and Father in heaven _are_ too far away to be trulycomforting. I like the people I love to be close to me. I guess that iswhy, when I was little, I used to hold out my arms at night, hoping myMother would come and hold me tight. But she never came, and now I knowit's no use. 

There are a great many things that are no use. One is in telling peoplewhat 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 thedining-room just as we were taking our seats for breakfast, and shelooked so funny that everybody stared, though nobody dared to even smilevisible. All the children are afraid of Miss Bray; but at that time Ihadn't found out her true self, and, not thinking of consequences, Ijumped 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 tohear 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 ispink--" But I didn't get any further, for she grabbed my hand and almostran with me out of the room. 

"You piece of impertinence!" she said, and her eyes had such sparks inthem 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 beimpertinent. I thought she'd like to know. I thought wrong. 

I loathe Miss Bray. The very sight of her shoulders in the back gets memad all over without her saying a word, and everything in me that'swrong 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, andshe walks like she was the Superintendent of most of it. But I couldstand that. I could stand her cheeks, and her frizzed front, and a goodmany other things; but what I can't stand is her passing for beingtruthful when she isn't. She tells stories, and she knows I know it; andfrom the day I found it out I have stayed out of her way; and were shethe Queen of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the United States I'd wanther 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. Ihad come in to bring some water, and had a waiter full of glasses in myhands, and was just about to put them on the table when I heard MissBray tell her Lie. 

That's what she did. She Lied!

Those glasses never touched that table. My hands lost their hold, anddown they came with a crash. Every one smashed to smithereens, and Istanding staring at Miss Bray. The way she told her story was this. TheBoard deals us out for adoption, and that morning they were discussing arequest for Pinkie Moore, and, as usual, Miss Bray didn't want Pinkieto go. You see, Pinkie was very useful. She did a lot of disagreeablethings for Miss Bray, and Miss Bray didn't want to lose her. And whenMrs. Roane, who is the only Board lady truly seeing through her, asked, real sharplike, why Pinkie shouldn't go this time, Miss Bray spoke outlike she was really grieved. 

"I declare, Mrs. Roane, " she said--and she twirled her keys round andround her fingers, and twitched the nostril parts of her nose just likea horse--"I declare, Mrs. Roane, I hate to tell you, I really do. ButPinkie Moore wouldn't do for adoption. She has a terrible temper, andshe's so slow nobody would keep her. And then, too"--her voice was thePharisee 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 caughttaking things from the girls. I hope none of you will mention this, as Itrust by watching over her to correct these faults. She begs me so notto send her out for adoption, and is so devoted to me that--" And justthen 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--starewith mouth open and eyes out; and then it was the glasses went down andI flew into the yard, and there by the pump was Pinkie. 

"Oh, Pinkie!" I said. "Oh, Pinkie!" And I caught her round the waist andraced 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 tomake me stop, but stop I wouldn't until there was no more breath. Andthen we sat down on the woodpile, and I hugged her so hard I almostbroke 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 truesttruth. Are you devoted to her?"

"Devoted to Miss Bray? Devoted!" And poor little Pinkie, who has no morespirit 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'dbe so thankful I'd choke for joy, except for leaving you. " Then sheboohoo'd too, and the tears that fell between us looked like we wereartesian wells--they certainly did. 

But Pinkie didn't know what caused my tears. Mine were mad tears, andnot being able to tell her why they came, I had to send her to the houseto wash her face. I washed mine at the pump, and then worked off some ofmy mad by sweeping the yard as hard as I could, wishing all the timeMiss Bray was the leaves, and trying to make believe she was. I was fullof the things the Bible says went into swine, and I knew there would betrouble for me before the day was out. But there wasn't. Not even forbreaking the pump-handle was I punished, and Miss Bray tried so hard tobe friendly that at first I did not understand. I do now. 

That was my first experience in finding out that some one who lookedlike a lady on the outside was mean and deceitful on the inside, and itmade me tremble all over to find it could be so. Since then I have neverpretended to be friends with Miss Bray. As for her, she hates me--hatesme because she knows I know what sort of a person she is, a sort Iloathe from my heart. 

When I first got my diary I thought I was going to write in it everyday. I haven't, and that shows I'm no better on resolves than I am onkeeping step. I never keep step. Sometimes I've thought I was reallysomething, but I'm not. Nobody much is when you know them too well. Itis a good thing for your pride when you keep a diary, specially when youare truthful in it. Each day that you leave out is an evidence ofcharacter--poor character--for it shows how careless and put-off-y youare; both of which I am. 

But it isn't much in life to be an inmate of a Humane Association, or aHome, or an Asylum, or whatever name you call the place where job-lotcharity children live. And that's what I am, an Inmate. Inmates are likemalaria and dyspepsia: something nobody wants and every place has. Minerva James says they are like veterans--they die and yet foreverlive. 

Well, anyhow, whenever I used to do wrong, which was pretty constant, Iwould say to myself it didn't matter, nobody cared. And if I let achance slip to worry Miss Bray I was sorry for it; but that was before Iunderstood her, and before Miss Katherine came. Since Miss Katherinecame I know it's yourself that matters most, not where you live orwhere you came from, and I'm thinking a little more of Mary Cary than Iused to, though in a different way. As for Miss Bray, I truly try attimes to forget she's living. 

But she's taught me a good deal about Human Nature, Miss Bray has. Aboutthe side I didn't know. It's a pity there are things we have to know. Ithink I will make a special study of Human Nature. I thought once I'dtake up Botany in particular, as I love flowers; or Astronomy, so as tofind out all about those million worlds in the sky, so superior toearth, and so much larger; but I think, now, I'll settle on HumanNature. Nobody ever knows what it is going to do, which makes it full ofsurprises, but there's a lot that's real interesting about it. I likeit. As for its Bray side, I'll try not to think about it; but if thereare 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 muchrather know little and be happy than find out the miserable much somepeople do. 

Anyhow, I won't have to remember all I learn, for Miss Katherine saysthere are many things it's wise to forget, and whenever I can I'llforget mean things. I'd forget Miss Bray's if she'd tell me she wassorry and cross her heart she'd never do them again. But I don't believeshe ever will. God is going to have a hard time with Miss Bray. She'sright 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? BecauseI'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 naturethan Miss Bray has charms for gentlemen. 

But Miss Katherine--well, there never was and never will be but one MissKatherine, and there's as much chance of my being like her as there isof 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 afriend like Miss Katherine you've got strength to do anything. To standanything, too. 

The beautiful part of it is that I live with her; that is, she lives inthe Asylum, and I sleep in the room with her. 

It happened this way. Last summer I didn't want to do anything but sitdown. It was the funniest thing, for before that I never did like to sitdown if I could stand up, or skip around, or climb, or run, or dance, orjump. 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 Ididn't even feel like reading. I'd have such queer slipping-awayfeelings right in my heart that I'd call myself a drop of ink on ablotter that was spreading and spreading and couldn't stop. Sometimes Iwould 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 tosleep at night for fear I would die, and I stayed awake so as to knowabout it if I did. 

And then I began to be afraid of dying, and my heart would beat so Ithought it would wear out. But I didn't tell anybody how I felt. I wasashamed of being afraid, and I just told God, because I knew He couldunderstand better than anybody else; and I asked Him please to hold onto me, I not being able to do much holding myself, and He held. I knowit, for I felt it. 

You see, Mrs. Blamire--she's Miss Bray's assistant--was away; Miss Braywas busy getting ready to go when Mrs. Blamire came back; and Miss Joneswas pickling and preserving. I didn't want to bother her, so I draggedon, 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; butI couldn't eat it. And then one day I began to talk so queer they werefrightened, and told Miss Bray, and she sent for the doctor quick. Thatafternoon they took me to the hospital, and the last thing I saw waslittle Josie White crying like her heart would break with her armsaround a tree. 

"Please don't die, Mary Cary, please don't die!" she kept saying overand over, and when they tried to make her go in she bawled worse thanever. I tried to wave my hand. 

"I'm not going to die, I'm coming back, " I said, and that's all Iremember. 

I knew they put me in something and drove off, and then I was in alittle 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 talkedjust the same. They told me I made speeches by the hour, and read booksout loud, and recited poems that had never been printed. But when Istopped and lay like the dead, just breathing, the girls say they heardthere were no hopes, and a lot of them just cried and cried. It wasawful nice of them, and if they hadn't cut my hair off I would have madea real pretty corpse. 

The day I first saw Miss Katherine really good she was standing by mybed, holding my wrist in one hand and her watch in another, and Ithought she was an angel and I was in heaven. She was in white, and Itook 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 thoughtof 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 Iknew I was in heaven, for heaven isn't a place; it's a feeling, and Ihad it. 

And that's how I met Miss Katherine. 

Her father and mother are dead, just like mine. Her father was JudgeTrent, and his father once owned half the houses in Yorkburg, but lostthem 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 herbrothers, or any of her relations, but went to Baltimore to study to bea nurse. After she graduated she didn't come back for three or fouryears, and she hadn't been back six months when I was taken sick. Andnow 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'tknow how much, she never mentioning money before me; but she has some, for I heard Miss Bray and Mrs. Blamire talking one night when theythought I was asleep; and for once I didn't interrupt or let them know Iwas awake. 

I had been punished so often for speaking when I shouldn't that thistime I kept quiet, and when they were through I couldn't sleep. I wasso 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 nextto Mrs. Blamire's, where the children who are sick stay, when I heardMiss Bray talking to Mrs. Blamire, and at something she said I sat up inbed. Right or wrong, I tried to hear. I did. 

They were sitting in front of the fire, and Miss Bray leaned over andcracked the coals. 

"Have you heard that Miss Katherine Trent is coming here as a trainednurse?" 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 justcackled. "Coming here? To this place? I do declare!" And she drew herchair up closer, being a little deaf. 

"That's what she's going to do. " Miss Bray took off her spectacles. "TheBoard can't afford to pay her a salary, but she's offered to comewithout one, and next week she'll start in. "

"Katherine Trent always was queer, " she went on, still rocking with allher might. "She can get big prices as a nurse, though she doesn't haveto nurse at all, having money enough to live on without working. And whyshe wants to come to a place like this and fool with fifty-odd childrenand 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 gettingreligion. "My, but I'm glad! Miss Katherine Trent coming here! And nextweek, you say? I do declare!" And her gladness sounded in her voice. Itwas 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 forherself. 

That was almost a year ago, and now my hair has come out and curls worsethan 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 tosee what I do look like, but I'm always in such a hurry I don't havetime. I know my eyes are blue, for Miss Katherine said this morning theygot bigger and bluer every day, and if I didn't eat more I'd be nothingbut eyes. If you don't like a thing, can you eat it? You cannot. Thatis, in summer you can't. In winter it's a little easier. 

I never have understood how Miss Katherine could have come to an OrphanAsylum to live and to eat Orphan Asylum meals when she could have eatenthe best in Yorkburg. And Yorkburg's best is the best on earth. Everybody says that who's tried other places, even Miss Webb, who getsright impatient with Yorkburg's slowness and enjoyment of itself. 

And Miss Katherine is living here from pure choice. That's what she isdoing, and she's made living creatures of us, just like God did when Hebreathed on Adam and woke him up. 

At the hospital she used to ask me all about the Asylum, and, neverguessing why, I told her all I knew, except about Miss Bray. MissKatherine had known the Asylum all her life, but had only been in ittwice--just passing it by, not thinking. When I got better and couldtalk 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 ofunderclothes we wore in winter, and how many times a week we bathed allover; when we got up, and what we studied, and how long we sewed eachday, and how long we played, and when we went to bed--and all sorts ofother things. I wondered why she wanted to know, and when I found out Icould 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 becauseshe wanted to, and that she was much obliged to me for having found herwork 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, Isee her looking in the fire, and there's something in her face that'snever there at any other time. It's a remembrance. I guess most heartshave them if they live long enough. But you'd never think Miss Katherinehad one, she's so glad and cheerful and busy all the time. I wonder ifit's a sweetheart remembrance? I know three of her beaux; one inYorkburg and two from away, who have been to see her frequent times; buta beau is different from a sweetheart. I'm sure that look meanssomething secret, and I bet it's a man. Who is he? I don't know. I wishhe was dead. I do!

When I first came back from the hospital my little old sticks of legswouldn't hold me up, and down I would go. But I didn't mind that. I justminded not going to sleep at night. But sleep wouldn't come, and I'dget so wide awake trying to make it that I began to have a teeny bit offever again, and then it was Miss Katherine asked if she might take mein her room. I was nervous and still needed attention, she said, and--magnificent gloriousness!--I was sent to her room to stay untilperfectly 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 sleepright off. I kept wishing I was King David, so I could write a book ofgratitudes and psalms and praises, and that was the first night I everreally prayed right. I didn't ask for a thing except for help to beworth it--the trouble she was taking for just little me, a charitychild. Just me!

And oh, the difference in her room and the room I had left! She had hadit painted and papered herself, for it hadn't been used since kingdomcome, and the cobwebs in it would have filled a barrel. It had been apacking-room, and when Miss Katherine first saw it she just whistledsoft 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 init: one in the front and one in the back and one opposite the door youcome in. And when the paper was put on you felt like you were in a greatbig garden of roses; pink roses, for they were running all over thewalls, and they were so natural I could smell them. I really could. 

Miss Katherine brought her own furniture and things, and she put acarpet on the floor, all over, not just strips. And the windows hadmuslin curtains at them with cretonne curtains just full of pink roses, looped back from the muslin ones; and the couch and the cushions andsome chairs were all covered with the same kind of pink roses. And asfor the bed, it was too sweet for anybody to lie on--that is, foranybody but Miss Katherine to lie on. 

There was a big closet for her clothes, and a writing-desk which hadbeen in the family a hundred years--maybe a thousand. I don't know. Andone side of the room was filled with books in shelves which old PeterSands made and painted white for her. She lets me look at them as muchas I want, and says I can read as many as I choose when I am old enoughto understand them. She didn't mention any time to begin trying tounderstand, 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 fewbesides 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 assoon as I marry your father, so you can know what I looked like in caseI should die without warning. I want you to have it, knowing so wellwhat it means to have nothing that belonged to your mother, I not havinganything--not even a strand of hair or a message. 

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really did have a Mother, or if the doctorjust left me somewhere and nobody wanted me. I must have had one, forBetty Johnson says a baby's bound to. That a father isn't so speciallynecessary, but you've got to have a Mother. Mine died when I was born. Iwonder how that happened when there wasn't anybody in all this great bigearth 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 understandthings. 

In the winter time Miss Katherine always has a beautiful crackling firein her room, and some growing flowers and green things. It was arevelation to the girls, her room was. Not fine, and it didn't costmuch, but you felt nicer and kinder the minute you went in it. And itmade Mrs. Reagan's grand parlors seem like shining brass and tinklingcymbals. I wonder why?

III

MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA

I am going to write a history of my life. The things that happen in thisplace are the same things, just like our breakfasts, dinners, andsuppers. They wouldn't be interesting to hear about, so while waitingfor 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 diaryabout herself, but she didn't. Nobody, not even Miss Katherine, willtell me who I was before I came here, which I did when I was three. Iknow my nurse brought me, but I can't remember what she looked like, andwhen she went away without me: I never saw nor heard of her again. Idon't even know her name. I thought it was fine to play in a big yardwith 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 notbeing 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 somethingabout myself, but in some way she always gets out of it. I know mymother and father are dead, but that's all I do know; and I wouldn't askMiss 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 notbeing able to ask out what I'd like, I think a lot more, and some nightswhen I can't go to sleep, it gives me an awful sinking feeling rightdown in my stomach, to think in all this great big world there isn't ahuman that's any kin to me. 

I might have come from the heavens above or the depths below, only Ididn't, and being like other girls in size and shape and feelings, Iknow I once did have a Mother and Father. But if they had relationsthey've kept quiet, and it's plain they don't want to know anythingabout me, never having asked. 

It would make me miserable--this aloneness would, if I let it. I won'tlet it. I have got to look out for Mary Cary, frequently Martha, andwhen you're miserable you don't get much of anything that's goingaround. I won't be unhappy. I just won't. I haven't enough otherblessings. 

But not being able to speak out as much as I would like on some thingspersonal, I got into the habit of talking to my other self, which Inamed Martha, and which I call my secret sister. Martha is my every-dayself, like the Bible Martha who did things, and didn't worry trying tofind out what couldn't be found out, specially about why God letsMothers die. 

Mary is my Sunday self who wonders and wonders at everything and asks amillion questions inside, and goes along and lets people think she istruly Martha when she knows all the time she isn't. And if I do hold outand write a history of my life, it's going to be a Martha and Maryhistory; for some days I'm one, some another, and whichever I happen tobe is plain to be seen. 

When I grow up I am going to marry a million-dollar man, so I can travelaround the world and have a house in Paris with twenty bath-rooms init. And I'm going to have horses and automobiles and a private car andballoons, if they are working all right by that time. I hope they willbe, for I want something in which I can soar up and sit and look down onother people. 

All my life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was aJuny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary withfifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, whitecalico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hatswith blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezingfingers 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 iswriting to-day. ) I will try to love him, but if I can't I will be politeto him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be richsome day. I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, forthe clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they're going tobe so grand. Miss Katherine would be ashamed of that and make meashamed, 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 isthat there are to be no secrets about my children's mother. They are toknow all about me I can tell, which won't be much or distinguished, butwhat there is they're to know. And that's the chief reason I'm going towrite my history, so as to remember in case I forget. 

Well, now I will begin. I am eleven years and eleven months and threedays old. I don't have birthday parties. The Yorkburg Female OrphanAsylum is a large house with a wide hall in the middle, and a wing onone side that makes it look like Major Green, who lost one arm in thewar. 

There are large grounds around the house, and around the grounds is ahigh brick wall in front and a wooden fence back and sides. The childrenand the chickens use the grounds at the back; the front has grass andflowers, and is for company, which is seldom. Sometimes, just because Ican't help it, I chase a chicken through the front so as to know how itfeels to run in the grass, which it is forbidden to do. 

Forbidden things are so much nicer than unforbidden. I love to do themuntil they're done. 

The Asylum is on King Street, almost at the very end, and there isn'tmuch passing, just the Tates and the Gordons and a few others livingfarther 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 sucha 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 inyellow-brown grass, and, though hideous, it's a great comfort. That cowunderstands our feelings at mealtimes, and we understand hers. 

Humane meals are very much like yellow-brown grass, and our clothes areon the same order as our meals. As for our days, if it wasn't forcalendars 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 littlestget up and clean up until seven, when we march into the dining-room. At7. 25 we rise at the tap of Miss Bray's bell, and those who have morecleaning up-stairs march out; those who clear the table and wash thedishes stay behind. At 8. 30 we march into the school-room, where wehave prayers and calisthenics. The calisthenics are fine. At nine webegin recitations. 

We have a teacher who lives in town, Miss Elvira Strother. She's a goodteacher. The older girls help teach the little ones, and next year I'mto help. 

This Asylum is over ninety (90) years old, but looks much older. Thereis just money enough to run it, and it hasn't had any paint orimprovements in the memory of man, except the electric lights. The townput those in for safety, and don't charge for them. 

I wish the town would put in bath-tubs for the same reason. It wouldmake 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, nobodyhas ever thought of putting them in. Mr. Loyall, he's the mayor, sayseverybody has gotten on very well for over two hundred years withoutthem, and he don't see any use in stirring up the subject. So there'llnever be any change until he's dead, and in Yorkburg nobody dies tillthe last thing. 

There wouldn't be any electric lights if the shoe factory hadn't comehere. The men who brought it came from New Jersey, and they wantedlight, and got it. And Yorkburg was so pleased that it moved a littleand 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 wewere arctic explorers and would search for icebergs. The North Pole wasthe Reagan's house, half-way down the street, and it might as well havebeen, for it was as much beyond our reach. 

But it was the one thing we were all going to get some day when wemarried rich. And when we got it, we were going to drive up to the GaltHouse--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 someold clothes with the buttons off, and old magazines. None of us couldbear Mrs. Reagan--not a single one. 

It is a beautiful house, Mrs. Reagan's is. It has large white pillarsin the front and back, and it's got three bath-rooms, and a big tank inthe back yard. And it has velvet curtains over the lace ones, and goldfurniture and pictures with gold frames a foot wide. 

I heard Miss Katherine talking about it to Miss Webb one night. Theywere laughing about something Miss Katherine said was the mostimpossible of all, and Miss Webb said it was desecrating for such astately old house to fall into the hands of such bulgarians. What arebulgarians? 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 andme about some pickles. Bertha is awful timid, and she didn't knowwhether or not we ought to go to the front door; but I did, and I toldher 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. " AndI 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 andsurprised, 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 liketo see her, having a message from Miss Jones. " And he was so surprisedhe moved aside, and in I walked. 

I had heard so much about this house that I wasn't going to miss seeingwhat was in it, if that fool man was rude; so while he was gone to getMrs. Reagan I counted everything in the front parlor as quick as Icould, and told Bertha to count everything in the back. 

There were three sofas and two mirrors and nine chairs and six rugs andsix tables and two pianos, one little old-fashioned one and a big newone; and three stools and seventeen candlesticks and four pedestals withstatuary on them, some broken, all naked; and seven palms andtwenty-three pictures and two lamps and five red-plush curtains, threepairs over the lace ones and two at the doors; and as for ornaments, itwas a shop. And not one single book. 

I am sure I got the things right, for I'd been practising rememberingat observation parties, in case I ever got a chance to see inside thishouse; and I looked hard so I could tell the girls. 

Poor Bertha was so frightened she didn't remember anything but the clockand 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'thave held herself farther off. 

"What are you doing in here?" she asked, and she tried the haughtyair--"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 doorif you have a message from Miss Jones or Miss Any-body-else. I don'twant 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 wavedus 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 agood many people in Yorkburg have been once and no more. " And I bowedagain 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 beexpecting 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 anddon't know how to make herself. She don't agree with my nature, and if Ihad 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 atthis Asylum. I am naturally a wandering person. Well, I was happy. Iknow I've said that before, but Miss Katherine says that's one of thefew things you can say often. 

I had a kitten, and a chicken which I killed by mistake. I took it tothe pump to wash it, and it lost its breath and died. I still putflowers on the place where its grave was. 

It was my first to die. I have lost many others since: a cat, and arabbit, and a rooster called Napoleon because he was so strutty anddomineering to his wives. I didn't put up anything to his grave. Ididn't think the hens would like it. They just despised him. 

Then there were the remains of Rebecca Baker. She was of rags, withbutton eyes and no teeth, just marks for them; but I loved her verymuch. I kept her as long as there was anything to hold her by; but afterlegs and arms went, and the back of her head got so thin from lack ofsawdust that she had neuralgia all the time, I found her dead onemorning, and buried her at once. 

I loved Rebecca Baker: not for looks, but for comfort. I could talk toher without fear of her telling. She always knew how hungry I was, andhow I hated oatmeal without sugar, and she never talked back. 

During the years from three to nine I lived just mechanical, except onthe inside. I got up to a bell and cleaned to a bell, and sat down toeat to a bell; rose to a bell, went to school to a bell, came out to abell, worked to a bell, sewed to a bell, played to a bell, said myprayers to a bell, got in bed to a bell, and the next day and every daydid the same thing over to the same old bell. 

But when I marry my children's father there are to be no bells in thehouse 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 goto St. John's Sunday-school--Episcopal. The man who left this place putit in his will that we had to, but we go to all the other churches. Episcopal the first Sunday, Methodist the second, Presbyterian thethird, and Baptist the fourth, and when we get through we begin all overagain. 

We go to church like we do everything else, two by two. Start at a tapof that same old bell, and march along like wooden figures wound up; andthe people who see us don't think we are really truly children or liketheirs, except in shape inside. They think we just love our hideousclothes, and that we ought to be thankful for molasses andbread-and-milk every night in the week but one, and if we're not, we'rewicked. Rich people think queer things. 

Sundays at the Humane are terribly religious. 

They begin early and last until after supper, and if anybody is sorrywhen Sunday is over, it's never been mentioned out loud. We have prayersand Bible-reading before breakfast every day, but on Sundays longer. Then we go to Sunday-school, where some of the children stare at us likewe were foreign heathen who have come to get saved. Some nudge eachother and laugh. But real many are nice and sweet, and I just love thatlittle Minnie Dawes, who sits in front of me. She wears the prettiesthats in Yorkburg, and I get lots of ideas from them. I trim hats in mymind all the time Miss Sallie is talking--Miss Sallie is our teacher. 

She is a good lady, Miss Sallie Ray is. Her chief occupation isreligion, 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 atall 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 askingher all sorts of questions just to see her flounder round for answersthat I used to pretend I wanted to know a lot of things I didn't. But Idon't do that now. It was like punching a lame cat to see it hop, and Istopped. 

She don't ask me anything, either. Never has since the day Mr. Bensoncame in our class and asked for a little review, and Martha Cary madetrouble, of course. 

Miss Sallie was so red and excited by Mr. Benson sitting there besideher that she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't, or she wouldn'thave asked me questions, knowing I never say the things I ought. Butafter a minute she did ask me, fanning just as hard as she could. Itwas in January. 

"Now, Mary Cary, tell us something of the people we have been studyingabout this winter, " she said, "Mention something of Abraham, Isaac, andJacob, 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, fearingtrouble for himself, and not thinking of consequences for her. "

"That will do, " she said, and she fanned harder than ever, and lookedreal 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 wentout quick, and since then Miss Sallie has never asked me a singlequestion. Not one. 

Now I wonder what made Martha speak out like that? Abraham and Jacobwere good men who did some bad things, but generally only their goodnessis 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 willdo with everybody. He'll wipe out all the wrongness and meanness, andsee through it to the good. I hope that's the way it's going to be, forthat's my only chance. 

Since Miss Sallie stopped asking me anything, and I her, I have a lovelytime in my mind taking things off the other children and putting them onthe Orphans. There's Margaret Evans. In the winter she's always blue andfrozen, and I'd give her that Mallory child's velvet coat and gray muffand tippet, and put Margaret's blue cape and calico dress on her. 

Poor little Margaret! She's so humble and thankful she gets even lessthan the rest, it looks like, though I suppose in clothes she has thesame allowance, and the difference, maybe, is in herself. 

Some people are born to be stepped on, and of steppers there are alwaysa-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 hisprayers, except at St. John's, the prayer-book not providing for Orphansin particular. 

When church is over we march home and have dinner, and after dinner westudy the lesson for next Sunday and practise hymns until time for theafternoon service. That begins at four, and some of the town ministerspreach or talk, generally preach, long and wearisome. 

The Episcopal minister gets through in a hurry. We love to have him. Hetalks so fast we don't half understand, and before we know it he's gothis hand up and we hear him saying: "And now to the Father and to theSon--. " And the rest is mumbled, but we know he's through and is glad ofit, and so are we. 

The Presbyterian Sunday is the longest and solemnest, and I always writea 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; andafter the first five minutes she puffs away just as regular as if shewere wound up. Once I shut my eyes and tried to puff like her, but Iforgot to be careful, and did it so loud the girls came near getting introuble. 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 totry to make the girls come up and profess, but now he don't ask eventhat. Just sit where you are and hold up your hand, and when you jointhe church--any church will answer--you are saved. I don't understandit. 

We all like the Methodist minister. I don't think he knows many deadlanguages. He don't have much time to study, being so busy helpingpeople; but he knows how to talk to us children, and he always makes mewish I wasn't so bad. He always does, and the Mary part of me just risesright up on his Sunday, and Martha is ashamed of herself. He believes ingetting better by the love way. So do I. 

Miss Katherine is going away next week to stay two months. Going to herarmy brother's first, and then to the California brother, who's Northsomewhere. And from the time she told me I've felt like RobinsonCrusoe's daughter would have felt, if he'd had one, and gone off andleft her on that desert island. 

I don't know what we're going to do when she goes away. I could shedgallons of tears, only I don't like tears, and then, too, she might seeme. 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 shecomes back. The Mary part of me is so sick at the thought she hasn't anybackbone, 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'vegot to work. In plain words, its watch and pray, and with me it's thewatching that's most important. If I'm not on the lookout, and don't nabMartha 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 ussince she's been here. Some words don't tell things. The nursing whenwe're sick is only a part, and though she's fixed up one of the roomsjust like a hospital-room, with everything so white and clean and sweetin 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 somany things to us we didn't know before, she's almost made me like mybody. I didn't use to. Not a bit. 

It's such a nuisance, and needs so much attention to keep it goingright. So often it was freezing cold, or blazing hot, or hungry, and hadto be dressed in such ugly clothes that I was ashamed of it. And if everI 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 Icouldn't do it. I had to take it everywhere I went, and until MissKatherine came I had mighty little use for it. 

But since she's been here the girls are much cleaner, and we don't mindso much not having the things to eat that we like. That is, not quite somuch. 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. Bequiet. " And being made of flesh and blood, most of us would rather eatthe things we want to than the things we ought to. 

But the dining-room is much nicer. We have flowers on the table, and thecooking 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 whatI've been--Martha. 

She hadn't been gone two days when Mary gave up, and as prompt aspossible Martha invented trouble. 

It was this way. In the summer we have much more time than in thewinter, and the children kept coming to me asking me to make upsomething, and all of a sudden a play came in my mind. I just loveacting. 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 abouthim. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick sheis so solicitous and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed to me ifwe could just think him into marrying her, it would be the best workwe'd ever done, and I thought it was worth trying. 

They say if you just think and think and think about a thing you canmake somebody else think about it, too. And not liking Dr. Rudd, wedidn't mind thinking her on him, and so we began. Every day we'd meetfor 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 thebrain. Maybe that accounts for Miss Bray. 

She is fifty-three years old, and all frazzled out and done up withadjuncts. But Dr. Rudd, being a man with not even usual sense, and awfulconceited, don't see what we see, and swallows easy. Men arefunny--funny as some women. 

I don't think he's ever thought of courting Miss Bray. But she's thoughtof it, and for once we truly tried to help her. 

Well, we got ready, beginning two days after Miss Katherine left, andthe play came off Friday night, the third of July. In consequence ofthat play I have been in a retreat, and on the Fourth of July I made aNew-Year resolution. 

I resolved I would do those things I should not do, and leave undone thethings I should. I would not disappoint Miss Bray. She looked for thingsin me to worry her. She should find them. 

Well, I was in that top-story summer-resort for ten days. Put there forreflection. I reflected. And on the difference between Miss Katherineand Miss Bray. 

But the play was a corker; it certainly was. We chose Friday nightbecause Miss Jones always takes tea with her aunt that night, and MissBray 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 dieagain. 

Dr. Rudd is in the choir, and she just lives on having Friday nights tolook forward to. 

The ceremony took place in the basement-room where we play in badweather. 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 andMargaret Witherspoon were the bridesmaids. 

Lizzie Wyatt was the bride, and Katie Freeman, who is the tallest girlin the house, though only fourteen, was the groom. 

Katie is so thin she would do as well for one thing in this life asanother, so we made her Dr. Rudd. 

We didn't have but two men. Miss Webb says they're really not necessaryat 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'sraincoat was the gown, and I cut up an old petticoat into strips, andmade bands to go down the front and around my neck. Loulie Prentisspainted some crosses and marks on them with gilt, so as to make me looklike a Bishop. I did. A little cent one. 

There wasn't any trouble about my costume, because I could soap my hairand make it lie flat, and put on the robe, and there I was. But how toget a pair of pants for Katie Freeman was a puzzle. 

Nothing male lives in the Humane. Not even a billy-goat. We couldn'tborrow pants, knowing it wouldn't be safe; and what to do I couldn'tguess. 

Well, the day came, and, still wondering where those pants were to comefrom, I went out in the yard where a man was painting a window-shutterthat had blown off a back window. Right before my eyes was the woodhousedoor 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 ofpants, and a collar and cravat, and a coat and a tin lunch-bucket, whichhad been eaten--the lunch had. And when I saw those pants I knew KatieFreeman 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 andput 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 MissJones, 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 wherethey were. No matter what went wrong, from the cat having kittens or thechimney smoking, she looked to me as the cause. And if there was to beany searching, No. 4--I sleep in No. 4 when Miss Katherine isaway--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, whenthe time came for him to go home. She would have laughed, too. Shecouldn't have helped it. 

He is young, and Bermuda Ray says he is in love with Callie Payne, wholives just down the street. He has to pass her house going home, and Iguess that's the reason he wore his good clothes and took them off socarefully. But whether that was it or not, he was the rippenest, maddestman I ever saw in my life when he went to put on his pants and therewere none to put. 

I almost rolled off the porch up-stairs, where I was watching. I neverdid 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 theyard, 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. Andwhere 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 abroken whistle. "I'm responsible for no man's pants. When a man can'ttake care of his pants, he shouldn't have them. Besides, you shouldn'thave left yours in the woodhouse when working in a Female OrphanAsylum. " And she glared so at him that the poor male thing withered, andblushed real beautiful. 

He's a pretty young man, and I felt sorry for him when Miss Bray snappedso. I certainly did. 

"My overalls are my working-pants, " he said, real meek-like, and hisvoice was trembling so I thought he was going to cry. "It's very strangethat 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. " AndMiss Bray, who's good on a bluff, pretended like she had been trulyinjured, and the poor little painter sat down. 

Presently his face changed, as if a thought had come into his mind froma 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 afriend of mine who tries to be funny every now and then, and calls itjoking. I'll choke his liver out of him!" And he settled himself on thewoodpile to wait until dark before he went home. 

If anybody thinks that wedding was slumpy, they think wrong. It wasthrilly. When the bride and groom and the bridesmaids came in, all thegirls were standing in rows on either side of the walk, making an aislein 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, butthey got them in all right, keeping time with their hands. These are thewords:

 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, andhumming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn't letout until that night. That night we let go. 

There's nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was theminister 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 wasthe only silent one. But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and itsounded like the revivals at the Methodist church. It was grand. 

And that bride! She was Miss Bray. A graven image of her couldn't havebeen more like her. 

She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just likeMiss Bray's. Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and herface was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of doughjust above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray'smole. 

And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that littlenervous 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, andthat's the only way you'd know some men were men, and almost anythingwill do for a groom. Nobody noticed him. 

We were getting on just grand, and I was marrying away, telling themwhat they must do and what they mustn't. Particularly that they mustn'tget mad and leave each other, for Yorkburg was very old-fashioned anddidn't like changes, and would rather stick to its mistakes than go backon its word. And then I turned to the bride. 

"Miss Bray, " I said, "have you told this man you are marrying that youare 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 havetried to pass for a lamb, when you are an old sheep? And does he knowthat though you're a good manager on little and are not lazy, that yourtemper's been ruined by economizing, and that at times, if you weredead, there'd be no place for you? Peter wouldn't pass you, and thedevil 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 ofnew teeth? And will you promise to stop pink powder and clean yourfinger-nails every day? And--"

But I got no further, for something made me look up, and there, standingin 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 butdust and shabby old houses and poky people who knew nothing to talkabout, and to-day--oh, to-day it's dear! I love it!

You see, after that wedding everything went wrong. The girls said itwasn't fair for me to be punished so much more than the rest, and theywanted 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 paidall right. Paid to the full. But it's over now, and I'm not going tothink about it any more. When a thing is over, that should be the endof it, Miss Katherine says, and with me what she says goes. 

Miss Bray is away. If some of her relations liked her well enough tohave 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 visither sister somewhere in Fauquier County. Her sister's husband alwaysleaves home for his health when she arrives, and Miss Bray says shethinks it's so queer he has the same kind of spells at the same timeevery 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; turnyour little wheel. " And inside I was turning as hard and fast as asure-enough squirrel turns; but outside I was just mechanical. 

I wonder sometimes I don't blaze up right before people's eyes. I'm sooften on fire--that is, my mind and heart are--that I think at times mybody 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 doctorswon'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 Itravel 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 beenwith 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 themmoving from place to place. 

They wanted Miss Katherine to go to Europe with them this fall, but sheisn't going. She's been twice, and says she don't want to go. But Idon't believe it's that. I believe it's something else. 

But sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof! I'm going to enjoyher staying, and already everything seems different. 

You see, Miss Katherine lives here just for love, and when you do thingsfor 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 oneof that kind; but she never treats us as if she thinks of that. If wewere relations she liked, she couldn't be kinder or nicer, and when achild 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; andthere's no nonsense or sullenness or shamming where she is. She can seethrough the insides of your soul, up to the top and down to the tip, andin front of her eyes you are just your plain self. Only that, andnothing more. They are gray, her eyes are, with a dark rim around thegray part; and she has the longest black lashes I ever saw. Her hair isblack, too, like an Eastern Princess and in the morning when she putsher cap on and her nurse's white dress, which she wears when on duty, Icall her to myself, "My Lady of the Lovely Heart, " and I could kneeldown and say my prayers to her. 

I don't, though, for she would tell me pretty quick to get up. Shedoesn'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 stupidqueer, or silly queer, or smart queer, or beautiful queer, or religiousqueer, 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 atthis Orphan Asylum, just to help us children, and doing it as cheerfullyas if she were happier here than she would be anywhere else. If herstaying isn't queerness, beautiful queerness, what is it?

I don't understand it, and I don't believe I ever will understand howany one who can get ice-cream will take prunes. 

But Miss Katherine has got a way of seeing the funny side of things, andsometimes 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'tlet it change you, and that an inward disposition is hard on otherpeople. 

I don't know what that means, but I think it's the same as sayingthere's no use in always chewing the rag. Martha is right much inclinedto be a chewer. 

Miss Webb is, too. She is Miss Katherine's best friend, and I just loveto hear her talk. 

She always comes once a week, often twice, to spend the evening at theAsylum 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 notasleep, speak low. " So when I can't, really can't, sleep, though I dotry, I hear them talking, and the things Miss Webb says are a greatrelief to my feelings. 

She doesn't come to supper, orphan-asylum suppers being refreshments tostay from, not come to, but nearly always they make something on achafing-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 andeasy, so they won't know I am awake, for fear they might think I am notasleep on purpose. 

But I have to hold on to the bed and stuff my ears and nose so as not tohear and smell, for I am that hungry I could eat horse if it hadWorcestershire sauce on it. And that is what they put in their things, which shows that in eating, even, Miss Katherine preaches sense andpractises taste. 

Miss Webb just laughs at theories, and brings all sorts of good thingswith her. She says doctors have wronged more stomachs than they've everrighted by all this dieting business, and, while there's sense in someof 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 nextday. But if I could rise out of bed and eat as much as I want out ofthat chafing-dish, there would be a funeral Miss Bray would like toattend. The corpse would be Mary Cary, died Martha. 

There is a screen at the foot of my bed, put there so the light won'tbother me and so I won't be seen. And, thinking I am asleep, MissKatherine and Miss Webb talk on as if I were dead; and it's veryinteresting the things they talk about. 

Of course, Miss Webb came over last night, and, after talking about twohours, she said: "Oh, I forgot to tell you. Lizzie Lane is going tomarry Bob Rogers, and right away. I don't suppose you've heard. "

"Yes, I have; Lizzie wrote me. " And Miss Katherine took the hair-pinsout of her hair and let it fall down her back. "What made her change hermind? What is she marrying him for?"

"How do I know?" And Miss Webb tasted the chocolate to see if it wassweet enough. 

"How does anybody know what a man is married for? In most cases youcan't risk a guess. Lizzie is a woman, therefore 'hath reason orunreason for her act. '"

"How did it happen? What made her change her mind?" and Miss Katherinethrew 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 orno. But Bob remembers, and the wedding is to be week after next. He'scourted her three times a year for seven years; but since he's beenliving North he hasn't even written to her, and she didn't know he wasin town until he came up that night to see her. 

"He stayed until after one o'clock, and didn't mention marriage. But ashe got up to go he told her his house was going to send him on a sixmonths' 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 infront of her, and clasped her hands behind her head. 

"I don't wonder at the unhappy marriages, " she said. "The queer part isthere aren't more of them. Why did Bob wait eight years to talk toLizzie like this? Why is it a man has so little understanding of awoman?"

"Why? Because he's a Man. The Lord made him, and there must be somereason for him; but even the Lord must sometimes get worn out at hisdumbness. 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 dreamI love most. 

I see hundreds and hundreds of little creatures (they are the Mary partof little children), and they are afraid and shivering and standingabout, not knowing where to go or what to do. And then Miss Katherine isin 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, smilingand 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. Therewon'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 arenot saved, and you will never know which it is until after you are deadand find out. Miss Bray believes she is saved, and she takes liberties. She also thinks everything is as God ordered it, and she believes Godordered poor Mrs. Craddock to die--that is, took her away. I don't. Ithink 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 cookedbreakfast in her stocking feet when the baby was only a week old, andthat night she had the influenza, and the next pneumonia. On the sixthday 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 neverwould have made them so necessary if He had meant to take them away whenthey 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 Iknow He sees it bigger than we do, and maybe He is working at somethingthat isn't finished yet. 

Minnie Peters is real sick. Miss Katherine has put her in thehospital-room, and is staying in there with her. 

I am all alone by myself to-night. I don't like aloneness at night. Itmakes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherinesays is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseasesput together. 

She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often differentfrom the way other people feel about it. And when you don't agree withpeople, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don't agreewith you. I believe that's true. Not being by nature much of anagree-er, and having feelings I hope others don't, I would be a walkingargument if Miss Katherine hadn't stopped me and explained some things Ididn't realize before. 

Last night, being by myself, and not being able to go to sleep, I wrotea piece of poetry. 

Miss Katherine says it's hard to forgive people who think they writepoetry, so I won't show her this. But it does relieve you to write downa lot of woozy nothing that is somehow like you feel. This is thepoem--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 bereally ill since Miss Katherine came. It makes you feel so queer in thethroat to know somebody is truly sick. 

A lot of the girls have been sick a little with colds and small andunserious diseases in the past year. But Miss Katherine says it's herbusiness to keep us well, not just get us well after we're sick, andshe's certainly done it. We've been weller than we ever were in ourlives, and no medicine taken. Just plain common-sense regulations. 

I wonder what's the matter with Minnie? The doctor hasn't said, but MissKatherine is uneasy, and she won't let anybody come in the room. Shehasn'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 arebetter prepared for the happy-land than we ever were before. But thedanger of anybody going to it right away is over. 

Minnie Peters has had scarlet fever, and the commotion made her realfamous. 

Miss Katherine knew it from the first, but Dr. Rudd wouldn't believe ituntil he had to, and Yorkburg got so excited it hasn't talked ofanything else for weeks. 

Minnie was awful ill. Two days and two nights they didn't think shewould live, and for three weeks Miss Katherine didn't leave the room. Ifit hadn't been for her Minnie would be dead. 

Miss Katherine's room has been closed since they first found out it wasreally scarlet fever Minnie had, and I have been in No. 4 again. She isgoing 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 dosomething which shows whether you are a Christ-kind Christian or theusual kind, and she is tired out. She won't admit it, though, and laughsand kisses her hand over the banister, which is all the closer we haveseen 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 churchChristian. You couldn't make her miss going to church. She thinks she'dhave 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 tobuy Christmas presents with. 

I didn't have a cent. Not one. Christmas was coming. Money wasn't. Andwhat'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 andwithout price, and even that you can't keep without both. Not beingsuitable to the season, I couldn't give that away, even if I had it tospare, and wondering what to do almost made me sick. 

I thought and thought until my brain curdled. I looked over everything Ihad to see if there was a thing I could sell. There wasn't. I couldn'ttell Miss Katherine, knowing she'd fix up some way to give me some andpretend I was earning it; and then, one day, when she was out, I lockedmyself in her room, and Martha gave Mary such a spanking talk that Marymoved. 

Everything Martha had suggested before, Mary had some excuse for notdoing. 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 nowand then, and that day she got it. When the talk was over, there was aplan settled on, and the plan was this. 

Each day in December we have an apple for dinner. Mr. Riley sends usseveral barrels every winter, and, as they won't keep, we have oneapiece until they're gone. 

We don't have to eat them at the table, and when Martha told Mary youcould do anything you wanted if you wanted to hard enough--except raisethe dead, of course--the idea came that I could sell my apple. And rightaway came the thought of the boy I could sell it to. John Maxwell is hisname. 

He goes to our Sunday-school and is fifteen, and croaks like abull-frog. Ugly? Pug-dog ugly; but he's awful nice, and for a boy hasreal much sense. 

His father owns the shoe-factory, and has plenty of money. I know, forhe told me he had five cents every day to get something for lunch, andfifty cents a week to do anything he wants with. His mother gives it tohim. 

Well, the next Sunday he came over to talk, like he always does afterSunday-school is out, and I said, real quick, Mary giving signs ofsilliness:

"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 appleevery day. It's for sale. Want to buy it?"

"What's the price?" Then he laughed. "I'm from New Jersey. What's itworth?"

"It's worth a cent. As you're from New Jersey, I charge you two. Takeit?"

"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 howthe apple could be put where he could get it, and the money where Icould. We decided on a certain hole in the Asylum fence John knewabout, and every evening that week I put my apple there and found histwo 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'sJohn Maxwell's cousin--had heard about the apple selling. He told me Iwasn'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, andI'll meet you. I'll give four. "

"All right, " I said. "I'm in business to make money. I'm not chargingfor worth, but for want. The one who wants it most will pay most. It cango at four. "

"No, it can't!" said Roper. His father is rich, too. He's theVice-President of the Factory, and Roper puts on lots of airs. He thinksmoney can do anything. 

"I'll give five. Apples in small lots come high, and selected oneshigher. 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 gaveRoper such a blow that my heart popped right out on my tongue and satthere. 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 beatRoper 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'reafraid it will be found out. And a coward. Good Lord!

Anyhow, after that I got five cents a day for my apple. John put sixcents 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 pokesitself in. But five cents is all I can take. "

"Which shows you're new in business, or you'd take the other fellow'sskin if he had to have what you've got. And I'm bound to have thatapple. Bound to!" And he dug the toe of his shoe so deep in the dirt hecould have put his foot in. We were down at the fence, where I went totell him he mustn't leave but five cents any more. 

The Apple business was much easier than the Entertainment business; butI enjoyed both. Making money is exciting. I guess that's why men loveto make it. 

I made in all $2. 34. One dollar and fifty cents on entertaining, andeighty-four cents on apples. 

The entertaining was this way. Mrs. Dick Moon is twin to the lady wholived in a shoe. Her house isn't far from the Asylum, and I like herreal much; but she isn't good on management. Everything on the placejust runs over everything else, and nothing is ever ready on time. 

She has money--that is, her husband has, which Miss Katherine says isn'talways the same thing. And she has servants and a graphophone and apianola, but she doesn't really seem to have anything but children, andthey are everywhere. 

They are the sprawly kind that lie on their stomachs and kick theirheels, and get under your feet and on your back. And their mouths alwayshave molasses or sugar in the corners, and their noses have colds, andtheir 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 meover with a message. Sometimes I do, and the day Martha gave Mary such arasping about making money, another thought came besides the apples, andI went that afternoon to see Mrs. Moon. 

"Mrs. Moon, " I said, "the children have colds and can't go out. If MissBray will let me, would you like me to come over and entertain themduring our play-hour? It's from half-past four to half-past five. I'llcome every day from now until Christmas, and I charge twenty-five centsa week for it. "

I knew my face was rambler red. I hated to mention money, but I hatedworse not to have any to buy Miss Katherine a present with. If shethought twenty-five cents a week too high she could say so. But shedidn'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 andkissed me so funny I thought she was going to cry. 

"Of course I want you, " she went on, after wiping her nose. She had acold, too. "You can manage the children better than I, and if you knewwhat one quiet hour a day meant to the mother of seven, all undertwelve, you'd charge more than you're doing. I'll see Miss Brayto-morrow. "

She saw, and Miss Bray let me come. 

Mrs. Moon is a member of the Board, and Mr. Moon is rich. Miss Braynever sleeps in waking time. 

Well, when Mrs. Moon paid me for the first week, she gave me fifty centsinstead of twenty-five, and I wouldn't take it. 

"But you've earned it, " she said, putting it back in my hand, and givingit a little pat--a little love pat. "You didn't say you were coming onSundays, and you came. Sunday is the worst day of all. I nearly go crazyon Sunday. No, child, don't think you're getting too much. One doctor'svisit would be two dollars, and the prescription forty cents, anyhow. The children would be on the bed, and my head splitting, and Mammy asmuch good in keeping them quiet as a cackling hen. I feel like I'mcheating in only paying fifty cents. Each nap was worth that. I wish Icould engage you by the year!" And she gave me such a squeeze I almostlost my breath. 

But they are funny, those Moon children. Sarah Sue is the oldest, andnobody ever knows what Sarah Sue is going to say. 

Yesterday I made them tell me what they were going to buy for theirmother's and father's Christmas presents, and the things they said werequeer. 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 inMr. Blakey's window, and they'll cut all right. They cost eighty-fivecents. "

"What are you going to give your father tools for?" I asked. "He's not aboy. "

"But I am. " And Bobbie jumped over a chair on Billy's back. "You saidyourself 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'mgoing 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 Bobbieas if he were not even the dust of the earth. Then she handed me herlist. 

"But, Sarah Sue, " I said, after I'd read it, "you've got seventy-fivecents down here for your mother and only fifty for your father. Do youthink it's right to make a difference?"

"Yes, I do. " And Sarah Sue's big brown eyes were as serious as if 'twerefuneral flowers she was selecting. "You see, it's this way. I love themboth seventy-five cents' worth, but I don't think I ought to give themthe same. Father is just my father by marriage, but Mother's my motherby 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 goneout. 

But it was a grand Christmas, the grandest we've ever known. It came onChristmas Day. From the time we got up until we went to bed we were sohappy we forgot we were Charity children; and no matter whateverhappens, we've got one beautiful time to look back on. 

Miss Katherine says a beautiful memory is a possession no one can takefrom 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, Melcheseysomething, who didn't have beginning or end, or any relations. 

I had fourteen from outside. Some I hid, because I didn't want the girlsto know, several not getting more than one, and hardly any more thanthree or four. 

Those who had the heart to give them didn't have the money, and thosewho had the money didn't have the heart. Being so busy with their ownthey forgot to remember, and if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine andher friends this last Christmas would have been like all others. 

Her Army brother's wife sent a box full of all sorts of pretty Indianthings, she being in the wild West near the Indians who made them. Andshe sent ten dolls, all dressed, for the ten youngest girls. 

She is awful busy, having three children and not much money; but MissKatherine says busy people make time, and those who have most to do, domore still. 

She sent me the darlingest little bedroom slippers with fur all aroundthe top. And in them she put a little note that made me cry and cry andcry, it was so dear and mothery. I don't know what made me cry, but Icouldn't help it. I couldn't. 

She doesn't know me except from what Miss Katherine writes, and Iwonder 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 kindand when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune andsuffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'mstifferer than a lamp-post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when anyone is good to me, I haven't a bit of firmness, and am no better than acaterpillar. 

I got thirty-one presents this year. Thirty-one! I didn't know I had somany friends in Yorkburg, and my heart was so bursting with surprise andgratitude it just ached. Ached happy. 

We are not often allowed to make regular visits, but I have lots oflittle talks informal on errands, or messages, or passing; and as I knowalmost 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 andsome short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it hasn't gotthree thousand people in it. A lot of them are colored. 

But it's very old and historic. Awful old; so is everything in it. Asfor its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's more in Yorkburg than anyplace of its size in America. 

Most of the strangers who come here, though, seem to prefer to pass onrather than stop, and Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. Alittle red mixed in might wake Yorkburg up, she says, and that's what itneeds--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. OldMrs. Peet is. Her husband has been dead forty years, but she still keepshis hat on the rack for protection, and whenever any one goes to see herafter dark she always calls him, as if he were upstairs. 

She lives by herself and is over seventy, and she's pretended so longthat he's living that they say she really believes he is. She almostmakes you believe it, too. 

Miss Bray sent me there one night. She wanted some cherry-bounce forEliza Green, who had an awful pain, and after I'd knocked, I'd have runif 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 thedoor! You'd better come down, Mr. Peet!"

"It's just Mary Cary!" I called. "Miss Bray sent me, Mrs. Peet. Shewants some cherry-bounce. "

"Oh, all right, Mr. Peet. You needn't bother to come down. It's justlittle Mary Cary. " And she opened the door a tiny crack and peepedthrough. 

"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 stepsand shaken hands I wouldn't have been surprised. It's certainly strangehow something you know isn't true seems true; and Mr. Peet, dead fortyyears, seemed awful alive that night. Every minute I thought he'd walkin. 

She likes you to think he's living at night. Every day she goes to hisgrave, which is in the churchyard right next to where she lives; but atnight he comes back to life to her. She's so lonely, I think it'sbeautiful 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 whenI do it. She don't even want to. 

And, don't you know, old Mrs. Peet sent me a Christmas present, too. Apair 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 billionairebrother sent her to spend on the children's Christmas, but it must havebeen a corker. The things she bought with it cost money, and the changeit 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. Theywere 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 inyour 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 theywere worn on both edges, was to feel like the Queen of Sheba, and I feltlike her. I could have danced up and down the table, but instead I saidgrace over and over inside. I had something to say it for. All of usdid. 

Besides a present, each of us had a new dress. It was made ofworsted--real worsted, not calico; and that morning after breakfast, andafter everything had been cleaned up, we put on our new dresses and camedown 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 hollyand running cedar knew it, too!

At first, though, the children felt so stiff and funny in theirnew-shaped dresses made like other children's that they weren't natural, so I pretended we were having a soir�e, and I went round and shook handswith 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 ofchildren that Christmas Day than we were, we didn't hear of it. I don'tbelieve there was, either. 

The reason we enjoyed this Christmas so was because it was on ChristmasDay. 

Our celebrations had always been after Christmas, and Christmas afterChristmas is like cold buckwheat cakes and no syrup. Like an orange withthe juice all gone. 

As for the tree, it was a spanker. We were dazed dumb for a minute whenthe parlor doors leading into the sewing-room were opened. But neverbeing able to stay dumb long, I commenced to clap. Then everybodyclapped. Clapped so hard half the candles went out. 

There wasn't a soul on the place that didn't get a present. This treewas Miss Katherine's, not the Board's, and the presents bought with thebrother's money were things we could keep. Not things to put away andpass on to somebody else next year. I almost had a fit when I found Ihad roller-skates and a set of books too. Think of it! Roller-skates andbooks! The rich brother sent those himself, and I'm still wondering why. 

This was Miss Katherine's second Christmas with us, but the first shehad managed herself. Last Christmas she had been at the Asylum such ashort time she kept quiet, and just saw how things were done. And notdone. But this year she asked if she could provide the entertainment, and the difference in these last two Christmases was like the differencein 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 Ididn't come out of that cloud of glory until night. Mrs. ChristopherPryor took me out. 

She had come over with some of the Board ladies to see the tree andthings, and as she was going home I heard her say:

"I don't approve of all this. Not at all. Not at all. These childrenhave had a more elaborate Christmas than mine. They've had as good adinner, 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 pooras 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 jetornaments on her bonnet just tinkled like bells, and one fell off. 

Mrs. Christopher Pryor is one of the people who would like to tell theLord how to run this earth. She could run it. That He lets the rain falland 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, andnot 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'sthe one thing she gives away. Everything else she holds on to with sucha grip that it keeps her upper lip so pressed down on her under lip thatshe breathes through her nose most of the time. 

She's a very curious shape. Being stout, she has to hold her head up tokeep her chin off her fatness; and she goes in so at the waist, comingout top and bottom, that you would think something in her would getjammed 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 hiswife, he always walks behind. 

Miss Webb says she's sorry for a man whose wife is too active in thechurch. Mrs. Pryor is. She leads all the responses; and as for thechants, she takes them right out of the choir's mouth and soars off withthem. 

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'dbeen Mary all day, and, like a splash in a mud-puddle, she made meMartha; and I heard myself say:

"No, Mrs. Pryor, we know you don't approve. You never yet have let achild here forget she was a Charity child, and only people who makeothers happy will approve. "

Then I walked away as quiet as a Nun's daughter. But I was burning hotall the same, and so surprised at the way Martha spoke, so serious andunlike the way she usually speaks when mad, that I had to go on the backporch and make snowballs and throw hard at something before I was allright 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 Icouldn't half say my prayers. But I knew God understood. He let theChrist-child be born poor and lowly, so He could understand aboutCharity children, and everybody else who goes wrong because they don'tknow how to go right. So I just thanked Him, and thanked Him in myheart. 

And when Miss Katherine kissed me good-night and tucked me in bed, shesaid I'd made her have a beautiful Christmas. That I'd helped everybodyand kept things from dragging, because I had enjoyed it so myself, andbeen so enthusiastic, and she was so glad I was born that way. 

I thought she was making fun, it was so ridiculous, thanking me, littleMary Cary, who hadn't done a thing but be glad and seen that nobody wasforgot. 

But she wasn't making fun, and I went off to sleep and dreamed I was ina place called the Love-Land, where everybody did everything just forlove. Which shows it was a dreamland, for on earth there're Brays andPryors, and people too busy to be kind. And in that Love-Land everythingwas done the other way, just backward from our way, and yourself camesecond instead of first. 

X

THE REAGAN BALL

It is snowing fast and furious to-day. It's grand to watch it. I lovemiracles, and it's a miracle to see an ugly place turn into a palace ofmarble and silver with diamond decorations. That's what the Asylum isto-day. I certainly would like to have seen the Reagan ball. Miss Webbsays 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 thatReagan ball had been talked about, and Yorkburg knew things about itthat had never been known about parties before, money not often beingmentioned here. 

Everybody knew what this ball was going to cost. Knew the supper wascoming from New York, with white waiters and kid gloves. And what Mrs. Reagan and her daughters were going to wear. That their dresses had beenmade in Europe, and that Mrs. Hamner hadn't been invited, and that moremoney was coming to Yorkburg in the shape of one man than had ever beenin it altogether before. 

If I just could have put myself invisible on a picture-frame and lookeddown on that fleeting show I would have done it. But not being able towork that miracle, I just heard what was going round, and it was veryinteresting, the things I heard. 

Miss Webb and Miss Katherine and I think just alike about Mrs. Reagan. Iknow, 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?" saidMiss Katherine, and she put her feet on the fender and lay back in herbig rose-covered chair. "I don't like her, or her family, the Englishshe speaks, or the books she reads. Why, then, should I go to herparties? I'm not going!"

"Oh yes, you are. " And Miss Webb put some more coal on the fire and madeit blaze. "Knowledge of life requires a knowledge of humanity In all itssubdivisions. Mrs. Reagan is a new sub. As a curio, she's worth theprice. You couldn't keep me from her show. "

"But she's such a snob. When a woman does not know her grandfather'sfirst name on her mother's side and talks of people not being in herset, Christian charity does not require you to visit her. I agree withMrs. Rodman. People like that ought to be let alone. "

"But Mrs. Rodman isn't going to let them alone. Not for a minute. Theonly thing that goes on among them that she doesn't know is what shecan't find out. She met me this morning, and asked me if I'd heard howmany people had gotten here, and when I said no, she made me come inMiss Patty's store, and told me all she'd been able to discover. 

"'There are eighteen guests already, ' she said, 'and nearly all haverooms to themselves. They tell me it's the fashion now for husbands andwives not to see each other until breakfast, and not then if the wifewants hers in bed. ' And the way she lifted her chin and eyebrows wouldbe 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, androoms have never been mentioned. But this is a degenerate age. Degenerate! Scandalous wealth shouldn't be recognized, and I don'tintend to countenance it myself!'

"But she will. " And Miss Webb took up her muff to go. "She bought a pairof cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she's going to wearthem at that ball. You couldn't keep her away. "

And she was there. The first one, they say. She had on the dress herGrandmother wore when her great-grandfather was minister to something inEurope; and when she sailed around the rooms with the big, high comb inher hair that was her great-great-grandmother's, Miss Webb says she wasthe 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 Virginiawas 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. Ofcourse, she knew there were other states where things were done thatmade 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 ofa Yankee. 

She lost a husband and two brothers and a father and four nephews and anuncle in the war; and all her money; and her house had to be sold; andher baby died before its father saw it; and, of course, that makes adifference. It makes a Yankee real personal. 

But Miss Katherine don't feel that way about Yankees. Each of herbrothers 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, withlittle 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 myheart beat so thick and fast I thought she'd hear. 

I hated it. Hated that satin dress, and the places where she wore itwhen away from the Asylum; and I sat up in bed, for lying down it washard to breathe. 

Presently she turned from the fire where she had been standing, lookingin, and came toward me and kissed me good-night. 

In her face was something I had never seen before--something so quietand 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 timesbefore, 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'tthe look that means something is dead. It means something that won'tdie, 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 mewhat 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 tounderstand, that if you don't keep busy you'll spend your life guessingat a puzzle that hasn't any answer. 

Miss Katherine has gone away. Gone to stay two months, anyhow. Maybethree. 

Her Army brother, the one who is a Captain, has been sent to Texas, andhis wife and children were taken ill as soon as they got there. 

Of course, they sent for Miss Katherine; that is, asked her by telegraphif she wouldn't come. She went. And she'll be going to somebody all herlife, 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 arealways 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. Wedidn't exactly need her, and her brother did; but oh the difference herbeing away makes!

Three months of doing without her is like three months of daylight andno sunlight. It's like things to eat that haven't any taste; like a roomin which the one you wait for never comes. 

I am back in No. 4, in one of the thirteen beds. My body goes on doingthe same things. Gets up at five o'clock. Dresses, cleans, prays, eats, goes to school, eats, sews, plays, eats, studies, goes to bed. Andthat's got to be done every day in the same way it was done the daybefore. 

But it's just my body that does them. Outside I am a little machinewound up; inside I am a thousand miles away, and doing a thousand otherthings. Some day I am going to blow up and break my inside workings, forI 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. Andthat'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 mybreathing 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 myteeth chatter; and as I can't tell anybody what I've heard, I am likelyto die from keeping it to myself. 

I am _not_ going to die until I find out. If I did I would be as bad offin heaven as on earth. Even an angel would prefer to know somethingabout itself. 

I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise itwouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matterwhen 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 likeMartha, though: always butting in with questions no Mary on earth couldanswer. 

Well, the way I found out was one of those mysterious ways in which Godworks his wonders. Yesterday afternoon I asked Miss Bray if I could goover and play with the Moon children, three of whom are sick, and shesaid I might. We were in the nursery, which is next to Mrs. Moon'sbedroom, and she and the lady from Michigan, who is visiting her, weretalking and paying no attention to us. Presently something the ladysaid--her name is Mrs. Grey--made everything in me stop working, and myheart gave a little click like a clock when the pendulum don't swingright. 

She was sitting with her back to the door, which was open, and I couldsee her, but she couldn't see me. All of a sudden she put down hersewing 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. "Eversince you told me about her something has been bothering me. Didn't yousay her mother had a brother who years ago went West?"

"Hush, " said Mrs. Moon, and she nodded toward me. "She'll hear you, andthe ladies wouldn't like it. "

She lowered her voice so I couldn't hear all she said, but I heardsomething about its being the only thing Yorkburg ever did keep quietabout. And only then because everybody felt so sorry for her. In a flashI 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. Idon't know. I kept on talking and making up wild things just to keep thechildren quiet, but I had to hold myself down to the floor. To help, Iput 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 ahalf, and I've got the right to know. I want to hear about my uncle. Idon't want to know him, he not caring to know me. " But before I couldreally think Mrs. Grey spoke again. 

"He has no idea his sister left a child. He told me she married veryyoung, and died a year afterward; and he had heard nothing from herhusband since. As soon as I go home I am going to tell him. I certainlyam. "

"You had better not, " said Mrs. Moon. "It's been thirteen years since heleft Yorkburg, and, as he has never been back, he evidently doesn'tcare to know anything about it. I don't think the ladies would like youto tell. They are very proud of having kept so quiet out of respect toher father's wishes. If Parke Alden had wanted to learn anything, hecould have done it years ago. "

"But I tell you he doesn't know there's anything to learn. " And theMichigan lady's voice was as snappy as the place she came from. "I knowDr. Alden well, " she went on. "He's operated on me twice, and I've spentweeks in his hospital. When he tells me it's best for my head to comeoff--off my head is to come. And when a man can make people feel thatway 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 meabout Yorkburg, knowing you were my cousin. He told me of his sisterrunning 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 manyother things. There's no place on earth he loves as he does Virginia. Hedoesn't come back because there's no one to come to see specially. Noreal close kin, I mean. The changes in the place where you were bornmake a man lonelier than a strange city does, and something seems tokeep him away. "

"You say he doesn't know his sister left a child?" Mrs. Moon put downthe needle she was trying to thread, and stuck it in her work. "Whydoesn't he know?"

"Why should he? Who was there to tell him, if a bunch of women made uptheir 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 notfor months after her death did he know she was dead. "

"We didn't, either, " interrupted Mrs. Moon. "In fact, we heard itthrough Parke, who went West after his father's death. He wrote RoyWright, telling him about it. "

"Who is Roy Wright, and where is he, that he didn't tell Dr. Alden aboutthe 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 herall her life. Not just loved her, but in love with her. His house wasnext to the Aldens', where the Reagans now live, and Major Alden andGeneral Wright were old friends, each anxious for the match. When Maryran away at seventeen and married a man her father didn't know, I tellyou Yorkburg was scared to death. "

"Do you remember it?"

"Remember! I should think I did. I cried for two weeks. Nearly ruined myeyes. Mary and I were deskmates at Miss Porterfield's school, and Iadored her. I really did. So did Dick Moon. " She stopped. Then: "Likemost women, I'm a compromise, " and she laughed. But it was a happylaugh. 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 knewshe 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 andbeautiful, and the last type on earth to win a woman of Mary'stemperament. 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 newscame, he and General Wright walked arm and arm all over Yorkburg, andtheir heads were high; but oh, my dear, it was pitiful. They didn'tknow, but they were clinging to each other, and the Major's face waslike death. "

"Didn't some one say he had been pretty strict with her? Held too tighta rein?"

"Yes, he had, and he deserved part of his suffering. His pride wasinherited, and Mary could go with no one whose great-grandparents hedidn't know about. But Mary cared no more for ancestors than she did forHottentots. When she met this Mr. Cary, a young English actor, at afriend's house in Baltimore, she made no inquiry as to whether he hadany, and fell in love at once. He was a gentleman, however. That was asevident as Major Alden's rage when he went to see the latter, and askedfor Mary. Mrs. Rodman happened to be in the house at the time, and whatshe didn't see she heard. She says the one thing you can't fool herabout is a counterfeit gentleman. And Ralston Cary was no counterfeit. "

"For Heaven's sake, don't get on what Mrs. Rodman thinks or says. Tellme about the marriage. I'm asking a lot of questions, but you're soslow. "

"I'm telling as fast as I can. You interrupt so much with questions Ican't finish. " And Mrs. Moon's voice was real spunky. 

"They were married in Washington, " she began again. "The morning afterthe interview with the Major they caught the five-o'clock train, andthat afternoon there was a telegram telling of the marriage. 

"Her father never forgave Mary. Seven months later he died, and aftersettling up affairs there was nothing left. Alden House was mortgaged tothe limit. There were a number of small debts as well as two or threelarge ones, and when these were paid and all accounts squared there wasbarely enough left for Parke to buy his railroad ticket to some city outWest, 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 isa famous surgeon? We've never heard it in Yorkburg. "

"Of course you haven't. Yorkburg has heard nothing since 1865. But thereare a good many things it could hear. " And Mrs. Grey laughed, but withher forehead wrinkled, as if she were trying to understand somethingthat was puzzling her. 

And then it was Mrs. Moon said something that made understanding comerolling right in on me. The answer to that look on Miss Katherine's facethe 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. Itwas 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 DoctorAlden speak of a Miss Trent--Miss Katherine Trent?"

"No. You mean--"

"Yes; she's the one. Parke Alden and Katherine Trent were sweetheartsfrom children. Shortly after Mary's marriage something happened. Therewas a misunderstanding of some kind, and they barely bowed when theymet. Everybody was sorry, for it was one of the matches Heaven mighthave made without discredit. Soon after Parke went away, Katherine wentoff to some school just outside of Philadelphia, and, so far as isknown, they've never seen each other since. "

Mrs. Grey brought both hands down on her knees. "I knew it was somethinglike that. I knew it! Doctor Alden is just that sort of a man. And it'sKatherine Trent? I wish I'd known it before she went away. "

"What would you have done?" Mrs. Moon looked frightened. She's verytimid, Mrs. Moon is, and always afraid of telling something sheoughtn'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 neverforgets. 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 shewas three, when he died suddenly, strange to say, in the same place hiswife 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 theBoard ladies she had heard the child's father say a hundred times hewould rather see her dead than have her mother's family take her. Andshe begged them not to let it be known who she was until she was oldenough 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 totell. 

"You ain't talking sense, " he said. "And I'm not going to listen anymore. 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 andtippet, 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 themore chance there was of my being forgot, and presently I told Mrs. MoonI had to go home. The boys said they didn't care, my stories wererotten anyhow, and out I went and ran so fast I had such a pain in myside I could hardly breathe. 

But I didn't go in right away. I couldn't. Inside of me everything wasthumping: "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 Reaganslive, and in the dark I stood there and shook my fist at my deadgrandfather. I hated him for treating my mother so. Hated him! Then Iburst 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 mixedup with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach, and my oldconscience 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 beenpunished for speaking when I shouldn't, and, besides, it was my duty tofind myself. They saw me, and then forgot. If they hadn't wanted me toknow what they were saying, they shouldn't have said it. 

But that didn't do my conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It'salways making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I willsay 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 MissKatherine came, and not say anything to her or to anybody about what I'dheard until I found out a little more about that remembrance in herface. But the waiting for her is the longest wait I've ever waitedthrough yet. 

It certainly is queer what a surprise you are to yourself. Before I knewthat my mother and her father and his father and some other fathersbehind 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 wouldhave been that airy Martha couldn't have lived with me, and would havehad to take Mary to the pump to bring her senses back with water. Maryis my best part, but at times she hasn't half the common sense sheneeds, 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 thefamily'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 myfather. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about his, whether highor low, and I know nothing about him. But I adore his memory! I am hischild as well as Mary Alden's, and that's a thing my children are nevergoing to forget. Never. 

And now the part I'm thinking of most is what was said about MissKatherine and Dr. Parke Alden being sweethearts when they were young. Hehas been away thirteen years, Mrs. Moon said, and Miss Katherine is nowtwenty-eight. I know she is, because she told me so. 

Thirteen from twenty-eight leaves fifteen, so she was fifteen when theyhad that fuss and he went off. Fifteen was awful young to love hard andpermanent; but Miss Webb says Miss Katherine was born grown andstubborn, and when she once takes a stand she keeps it. 

I wonder what she took the stand with Uncle Parke for? She is rightquick and outspoken at times, and I bet he made her mad aboutsomething. 

But she ought to have known he was a man, and not expected much. I knowmy children's father is going to make me so hopping at times I couldshake him. If he didn't, he would be terrible stupid to live with, andnothing wears you out like stupidness. I don't really mind a scrap. It'sso 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. Iknow in his secret heart she is still his. She's bound to be if she everonce was. 

Glorious superbness! Wouldn't that be grand? If they were to get marriedshe would be my really, truly Aunt! The very thought makes me so full ofthrills 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'tlet anybody know you know? If I can't tell soon what I've heard aboutmyself something is liable to happen. 

Nearly three months have passed, and I haven't told yet. I'm stillholding 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 couldtell 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'sbecause some days I'm so unnatural quiet and stay so much by myself. Ido that for safety, fearing otherwise I'd speak. 

They don't know what's going on inside of me. If they could see they'dfind nothing but quiverings and questions, and if I don't do anythingreally violent it's all I ask. 

Every morning and every night my prayers are just this: "O Lord, helpMary Cary through this day. I'm not asking for to-morrow, it not beinghere yet. But _This Day_ help me to hold out. " And all day long I'msaying 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 methink it. If that letter isn't sent soon, the answer will be received bya corpse. 

I'm never again going to have a secret. It's worse than a tumor ordropsy. Mrs. Penick has a tumor. I've never seen the dropsy, but asecret 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 twocents, 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 tooexcited to write anything down. Everything I do is done in dabs thesedays, 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 arechildren, not just orphans, when she is with us; and it's because sheloves us, trusts us, brings our best part to the top that we aredifferent when she is about. The very way she laughs--so clear andhearty--makes you think things aren't so bad, and already they havepicked up. Like my primrose does when I give it water, after forgettingit till it is as limp as old Miss Sarah Cone's cr�pe veil. 

I haven't told her anything yet, but I've been watching good. I haven'tseen any particular signs of memories and regrets, she being too busy tohave them since she got back. Still, I believe they are there, and I'mthat afraid I'll say Parke Alden in my sleep I put the covering over myhead, for fear she'd hear me if I did. 

I am back in her room, and this afternoon she asked me what I waslooking at her so hard for. I told her she was the best thing to lookat that came my way, and she laughed and called me a foolish child. ButMary 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. ParkeAlden. I sent it to his hospital in Michigan. I made it short, becauseby nature I write just endless, having gotten in the habit from makingup stories for the girls and scribbling them off when kept in, which inthe 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'tlet Miss Katherine know for a billion dollars that I'd sent it, but I'mglad I did. I'm sure she's got something in her heart she don't talkabout, for last night, when she didn't know I was looking, I saw thatsame 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 abouttravelling, as I've never been out of Yorkburg since I came in. But someday I'm going around the world, and I'm going to see everything anybodyelse has ever seen before I marry my children's father. Of course, afterI get married he will be busy, and there will be always some excuse thatwill make you tired. I'm going beforehand. Miss Webb says marriage isvery uncertain. 

This is a grand day. The crocuses are peeping up just as pert andpretty. The little brown buds on the trees have turned green and gettingbigger every day, and even the air feels like it's had a bath. I justlove the spring. Everything says to you: "Good-morning! Here we areagain. Let's begin all over. " And inside I say, "All right, " and I meanit; but oh, Mary Cary, you're so unreliable. There are times when yourfuture looks very much like a worm of the dust. 

Miss Bray is real sick. She hasn't been well for a long time, and shelooks like she's shrivelling, though still fat. She has nervousdyspepsia, which they say is ruinous to dispositions, and Miss Bray'sisn't the kind for any sort of sickness to be free with. 

It certainly is making her queer, for she's changed from sharpness totearfulness, and she weeps any time. A thing I never thought I'd live tosee. 

Poor creature, I feel real sorry for her. Miss Jones says she's wornout, but I don't believe it's that. I believe it's conscience andcoffee. Miss Bray isn't an all-over bad person. If it wasn't I knew shetold stories, I could have stood the other things. But when a persontells 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 sonervous, sometimes, that I can't help feeling sorry for her. 

I don't believe she will ever get well until she repents and confessesand crosses her heart that she won't do it again. A confession is agrand relief. 

Suppose Dr. Parke Alden don't write, don't notice me! I will be that madand mortified I will wish I was dead. But if he don't answer thatletter, I will write a few more things to him before dying, for, if I aman 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 inbloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, andMiss Katherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to makeme eat more. I don't want to eat. I want a letter. 

 * * * * *

Jerusalem the Golden! Now, what do you reckon has happened! Nothing willevermore surprise Mary Cary, mostly Martha. 

If the moon ever burns, or the stars come to town, or the Pope marries awife, or the dead come to life, I will just say, "Is that so?" and in myheart I will know a stranger thing than that. 

Yesterday Miss Bray sent for me to come to her room. She was sick inbed, and her frizzes weren't frizzed, and she looked so old and pitifulthat 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 sawanybody have. I knew there was a lot to come out and she'd better getrid of it, so I let it keep on without remarks, and after a while shetold me to shut the door, and get her a clean handkerchief out of hertop bureau-drawer. 

I did it. Then she told me to sit down. I did that, too, and it's well Idid. 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, andat times you've nearly worried me to death. But never since you've beenhere have you ever told a story, and that's what I've done. " And she puther 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 orasleep. But all of a sudden it came to me what she meant, and I put myarms around her neck and kissed her. That's what I did, Martha or noMartha; I kissed her. Then I said:

"Miss Bray, I'm awful glad you are sorry you did it. If you're sorryit's like a sponge that wipes it off, and don't anybody but you and meand God know about that particular one. And we can all forget it, ifthere's never any more. "

And then she cried harder than ever. Regular rivers. I didn't know thetop of your head could hold so much water. 

But she said there would never be any more, for she'd never had anypeace since the way I looked at her that day, and she couldn't stand itany longer. She didn't know why I had that effect on her, but I did, andshe'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 Ithought I'd better be quick while the feeling lasted. 

"Well, you know, Miss Bray, " I began, "Pinkie Moore hasn't been adoptedyet. She never will be while the ladies think what you told them istrue. You ought to write a letter to the Board and tell them what yousaid wasn't so. "

"I can't!" she said; and then more fountains flowed. "I can't tell themI 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'snothing to a conscience that's got you, and is never going to let you gountil you do the square thing. If you want peace, it's the only way toget 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 oldDoctor 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. "Youcan copy it when you feel better. " And, don't you know, she let me doit! 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 herplace. 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 tearsblotted it, but I told her that didn't matter, and when I got up to goshe looked better already. 

I knew how she felt. Like I did when my tooth that had to come out wasout. And a thing on your mind is worse than the toothache. One you cantell, the other you can't. A thing you can't tell is like a spook that'salways behind you, and right in the bed with you when you wake upsudden, and lies down with you every time you go to sleep. I know, forthat letter is on my mind. 

When I got out of Miss Bray's room I ran in mine, Miss Katherine beingout, and locked the door, and I said:

"Mary Martha Cary, don't ever say again there's no such things as modernmiracles. There's been a miracle to-day, and you have seen it. Somebodyhas been born over. " And then, because I couldn't help it, I criedalmost as bad as Miss Bray. 

But, oh, nobody can ever know how much harm it had done me to believe alady could go through life telling stories, and doing mean, dishonorable things, and not minding. And people treating her just thesame as if she were honest!

When I found out it wasn't so--that your sin did make you suffer, andthat it did make a difference trying to do right--I felt some of my oldMartha-ry scornfulness slipping away. And I got down on my knees, nowords, 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 aJuney-bug. 

I wonder if Miss Katherine will ever marry. She wasn't meant to live inan Orphan Asylum. She was meant to be the Lady of the House, and to wearbeautiful clothes, and have horses and carriages and children of herown, and to give orders. Instead of that, she is here; but sometimes shehas a look on her face which I call "Waiting. " Last week I wrote a poemabout 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 hastleft us, and thy loss we deeply feel. " But I wasn't meant for a poet anymore than Miss Katherine for an old maid. 

Dr. Parke Alden must be dead. Either that or he's no gentleman, or hedidn't get my letter. I wish I hadn't written it. I wish I hadn't lethim 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 dancewith the man in the moon, I might be able to write it down; buteverything in me is bubbling and singing so, I can't keep still towrite. 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 theschool-room, and Mrs. Blamire opened the door and looked in. "Mary Carycan 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 lookingfor a letter; and there, standing by a window with his back to me, was aman, and in a minute I knew. 

I couldn't move, and I couldn't speak, and Lot's wife wasn't any stillerthan I was. 

But he heard me come in, and turned, and, oh! it is so strange howright at once you know some things. And the thing I knew was it was alltrue. That he'd never known about me until he got my letter. For aminute he just looked at me. We didn't either of us say a word, and thenhe came toward me and held out his hands. 

"Mary Cary, " he said. And the first thing I knew I was crying fit tobreak my heart, with my arms around his neck, and he holding me tight inhis. His eyes were wet, too. They were. I saw them. He kissed me aboutfifty times--though maybe not more than twenty--and I had such a strangefeeling I didn't know whether I was in my body or not. It was the firsttime that any one who was really truly my own had ever come to see mesince I'd been an Orphan, and every bit of sense I ever had rolled awaylike the Red Sea waters. Rolled right away. 

I don't remember what happened next. Everything is a jumble of so manykinds of joys that I've been crazy all day. But I wasn't too crazy tosee 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 werestanding by the window, and as he saw her he looked again, as if hedidn't see good, and then his face got as white as whitewash. He tookout his handkerchief and wiped his lips and his forehead that were realperspiring, 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 knowher 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 washaving a fit, and met Miss Katherine coming in the front door. 

"Miss Katherine, " I said, "there's a friend of yours in the parlor whowants to see you. Will you go in?"

She walked in, just as natural, humming a little tune, and I walkedbehind her, for I wanted to see it. I will never be as ready for gloryas I was that minute. I could have folded my hands and sailed up, but Ididn't sail. It's well I didn't, for they didn't meet at all like Iexpected, and I was so surprised I just said, "Well, sir!" and sat rightdown on the floor and looked up at them. 

They didn't see me. They didn't see anything but each other; but ifthey'd had the smallpox they couldn't have kept farther apart, justbowing formal, and not even offering to shake hands. 

My, I was set on! I didn't think they'd meet that way; but Miss BeckyCole, who's kinder crazy, says God Almighty don't know what a woman isgoing to do or when she's going to do it. Miss Katherine proved it. Shedidn't fool me, though, with all her quietness and coolness. I knew herheart 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 nouse wasting any more time. " And I flew out, slamming the door tight, andshut 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 theparlor now. Miss Jones says everybody in Yorkburg knows he's here, andall talking. All!

I've been so excited since the first day he came that I've had littlesense. But my natural little is coming back, and I'm trying not to talktoo much. Of course, I had to say a good deal, because everybody had toknow how it happened that Doctor Alden came back to Yorkburg so suddenlyafter thirteen years' being away. And why he hadn't been before, andwhat he came for and when he was going away, and if he were going totake me with him. 

And then everybody remembered how he and Miss Katherine used to besweethearts when they were young. I tell you, the talking that's beengoing 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 Parkethan he knows about himself. If Yorkburg had a coat of arms it ought tobe a question-mark. 

They've had time to talk over everything that ever happened since Adamand Eve left Paradise, in the long walks they take, and in the eveningswhen he calls, which he does as regular as night comes. And now I'mwaiting for the news. I'll have to be so surprised. And I guess I willbe. Love does very surprising things. 

Miss Katherine knew where Uncle Parke was all the time. She knew who Iwas, 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; butthe more you love a person the madder you can get with them. And fromfoolishness 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 anymore nonsense. They are going to be married as sure as my name isn't ina 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 beenawfully excited about Uncle Parke's coming, and she says she hears he'svery distinguished and real rich. Isn't it strange how quick some peoplehear about riches? I don't know anything of his having any. He hasn'tmentioned money to me; but oh, I feel so safe with him! He's so strongand quiet and easy in his manners, and he's been so splendid andbeautiful 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? Iknow Dr. Parke Alden isn't the kind to get down on his knees. If hewere, Miss Katherine would certainly tell him to get up and say what hehad to say standing, or sitting, if it took long. But I'll never knowwhat 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 infrom a long walk down the Calverton road, where there's a beautifulplace for courters. When they got to the gate they stopped and talkedand talked. Then he walked to the door with her, still holding his hatin his hand, and though it was dark I could feel something different. Iwas 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 outhis hand to say good-bye. The way he did it, the way he looked at hermade me just know, and I got right down on my knees under thelilac-bush, and when he'd gone I sang, "Praise God, from whom allblessings flow. " Sang it loud. 

I didn't care who heard. I wasn't telling why I was thankful. Justtelling 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 knowwhich I've got the most of, gladness or sadness or happiness ormiserableness, and I'd rather cry as much as I want than have as muchice-cream as I could hold. 

But I'm not going to cry. I don't like cryers, and, besides, I haven't aplace to do it in private. I wouldn't let Miss Katherine see me, not ifI died of choking. I ought to be rejoicing, and I am; but the femaleheart 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 Icould if I let go. 

They are engaged. Uncle Parke and Miss Katherine are, and they are to bemarried on the twenty-seventh of June. That's my birthday. I will bethirteen on the twenty-seventh of June. 

They told me about it night before last. I was out on the porch, andMiss Katherine called me and told me she and Doctor Alden wanted me togo to walk with them. I knew what was coming. Knew in a flash. But Ipretended not to, and thanked her ever so much, and told her I'd justlove to go. 

We walked on down to the Calverton road, talking about nothing, andmaking out it was our usual night walk, but when we got to the sevenmaples 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 andtook my hands in his. 

"Mary Cary, " he began. And though his eyes were smiling, his voice wasreal quivering. I was noticing, and it was. "Mary Cary, Katherine and Ihave brought you with us to-night to ask if you have any objection toour being married. We would like to do so as soon as possible--if you donot object. "

He turned my face to his, and the look in his eyes was grand. It meantno matter who objected, marry her he would; but it was a way to tellme--the way he was asking, and I understood. 

"It depends, " I said, and, as I am always playing parts to myself, righton the spot I was a chaperon lady. "It depends on whether you loveenough. Do you?"

"I do. For myself I am entirely sure. As to Katherine--Suppose she tellsyou what she thinks. "

I turned toward her. "Do you, Miss Katherine? It takes--I guess it takesa lot of love to stand marriage. Do you think you have enough?"

In the moonlight her face changed like her opal ring when the creambecomes pink and the pink red. 

"I think there is, " she said. Then: "Oh, Mary Cary, why are you such astrange, strange child?" And she threw her arms around me and kissed metwenty times. 

After a while, after we'd talked and talked, and they'd told me thingsand 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, " Isaid. "I'm never going to be fashionable and not care for love. A homewithout it is hell. "

"Mercy, Mary!" Uncle Parke jumped. "Don't use such strong language. Itisn't nice. "

"But it's true. I read it in a book, and I've watched the Rices. Whenthere's love enough you can stand anything. When there isn't, you canstand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn'tknow, 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'tunderstand, " I said. "But I consent. " And I flew down the road and leftthem. 

I've written it out on a piece of paper, about their being engaged, andlooked at it by night and by day since they told me about it. I've saidit low, and I've said it loud, but I can't realize it, and the littlesense the Lord gave me He has taken away. 

They say I did it. Say I'm responsible for every bit of it, and that Iwill have to look after them all the rest of their lives to see that Ididn't make a mistake in writing that letter. And that I'm to go toEurope with them on their wedding tour and live with them always andalways. And--oh!--I believe my heart is going to burst with miserablehappiness and happy miserableness, and my head feels like it's in abag. 

Dr. Parke Alden and Miss Katherine Trent are the two nicest people onearth, and the two I love best. But I don't think they know all the timewhat they are doing and saying. They are that in love they don't see butone side--the happy side--and they think I am going to leave this placewith a skip and a jump and run along by them, third person, singlenumber, 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 todo. I know what I want to do! Everything in me gets into shiveringtrembleness when I think I could go to Europe with them on their weddingtrip. 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 themany more, and they want me. But it isn't so. Mary tries to believe it'sso, but Martha knows it isn't. They think they think they want me, butthey don't; nobody wants an outsider on a wedding tour, and I'm notgoing. 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 shewants to. Sometimes Martha is real hard on Mary. 

There is no use studying Human Nature. You can't study a thing thatchanges by day and by night, and is so uncertain you never know what itis going to do. Now, here is Mary Cary, mostly Martha, who would ratherget on a train or a boat and go somewhere--she don't care where--than todo any other thing on earth. Who has never seen anything and wants tosee everything, and who, if anyone had told her a year ago she could goto New York, and then to Europe, would have slid down every flight ofstairs head foremost from pure joy. And now she has the chance, she isnot going. She is Not. 

She hasn't much sense, Mary Cary hasn't, but enough to know weddingtrips are personal, and, besides, the girls have turned into regularweepers. Every time anything is said about going away their eyes waterup, and Martha feels like a yellow dog with no tail. I know they hateMiss Katherine's going; but why do they cry about my going? Lord, thisis a strange place to live in, this world is! I wonder what heaven willbe like?

Miss Bray is much better. She says Uncle Parke has cured her. I don'tbelieve 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; butI've found out when anything bothers you very much, it helps to take itout and look at it. Walk all around it, poke it and see if it's sureenough, and, if it isn't, tell it you'll see it dead before you'll letit do you that way. 

That's what I did with what was making me doleful, and now I'm all rightagain. It was because I did want to go to Europe awful, and it twistedmy heart like a machine had it when I turned my back on the chance. Andthen, too, it was because the girls begged me so not to go away for goodthat I got so worried. 

They said it wouldn't be the same if I wasn't here, and though theydidn't blame me, they begged me so not to go that I got as addled as theold black hen that hatched ducks. 

Now, did you ever hear of such a thing? As if it really mattered whereMary Cary lived! I didn't know anybody truly cared, and finding out mademe light in the head. But I know that's just passing--their caring, Imean. I'm much obliged; but they'll forget it in a little while, and Iwill be just a memory. 

I hope it will be bright. There's so much dark you can't help that abrightness is real enjoyable. They say what you look for you see, andwhat you want to forget you mustn't remember. There are a lot of thingsabout my Orphan life I'm going to try to forget. But there are some thatfor the sake of sense, and in case of airs, I had better bear in mind. Iguess Martha will see to those. Whenever Mary gives signs of soaring, Martha brings her straight back to earth. Martha doesn't care forsoarers, and she has a terrible bad habit of letting them know shedon't. 

Yorkburg hasn't settled down yet, and is still hanging on to the lastremnants of the surprise about Uncle Parke's coming, and about hismarriage to Miss Katherine and my going away. 

Of course, Miss Amelia Cokeland wanted to know if he'd made the Asylum apresent, and how much. At first nobody would tell her. She's got such aripping curiosity that there isn't a sneeze sneezed in Yorkburg, or acake baked, or a door shut that she doesn't want to know why. But maybeshe can't help it. Some people are natural inquirers, and that's theway she makes her living, telling the news. 

She used to work buttonholes, but since she can't see good she justspends the day out and tells all she hears. Nobody really likes her, buther 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 herwhat was in Miss Katherine's letter the first time she went away, andsince then she's never noticed me until Uncle Parke came. Now every timeI see her she's awful pleasant, and tries to make me talk. But a fingeronce 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 theBoard ladies to know. But, of course, they couldn't keep it secret. Theytold their husbands, and that meant the town. Nothing but a dead mancould 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-jellyfor Miss Jones over to little Jessie Carr, who was sick. 

"He could have kept her at a fashionable boarding-school from the dayshe was born until now for the sum he's turned over to the Board, " saidMrs. Carr, and her eyes, which are the beaming kind, just danced, Peeliesaid. 

"Well, he ought to, " grunted Mrs. Dent, who talks like her tongue wasdown her throat. "He ought to! We've been taking care of the child foralmost ten years. I hear he wants the house put in good condition, a newdining-room and kitchen built and four bath-rooms. The rest is to go tothe endowment. I think more ought to go to the endowment and less forthese luxuries. I don't approve of them. An Orphan Asylum is not ahotel. "

"No, but it ought to be a home, if possible, " said Mrs. Carr, and Peeliesaid she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven herhusband stood her all the time. 

I certainly am glad to know I'm paid for. Some day, when I'm grown andearning my own living, before I marry my children's father, I am goingto give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Parke. Of coursethat will be some time off, and until then I'll just have to try to bea nice person. 

Miss Katherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to havea nice person in the house with them--one of those cheerful, sunshinykind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they falldown. As I can't earn money yet, I'm going to try to be something likethat, so they won't be sorry I ever was born. Uncle Parke and MissKatherine won't. 

But isn't it strange, when the time comes for you to do a thing you arecrazy to do, you wish it hadn't come?

There have been days when I hated this Asylum. I've felt at times that Iwas just one of the numbers of the multiplication table, and in all mylife I'd never be anything else. And I'd almost sweep the bricks up outof 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 beforgotten. I would have liked to sit on St. John's Church steeple andhave everybody look at me and say:

"That's Mary Cary! She's great and rich, and gives away lots of moneyand sings like an angel. " That's what I once would have liked, but I'velearned a few things since I didn't know then. 

One is that high places are lonely and hard and uncomfortable, andpeople who have sat on them have sometimes wished they didn't. MissKatherine told me that herself, also that the place you're in is prettynear what you're fitted to fill. Otherwise you'd get out and fillanother. 

I've given up steeples and superiorities. But I'm glad I'm not going tobe an orphan, just an orphan, all my life. I'm glad; still, when I thinkof going away and leaving everybody and everything: the old pump, whereI drowned my first little chicken washing it; and the old mulberry-tree, where my first doll was buried; and the garret, where I made upghost-stories for the girls on rainy days; and the school-room; and evenNo. 4--when I think of these things, I could be like that man in theBible (I believe it was David, but it might have been Jonah), I couldlift 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, youtry 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 hedidn't die that first time. She thought he was going to, and so dideverybody else. He had Fright's disease, and it affected his heart, being liable to take him off any time, and Mrs. Gaines just carried onterrible. 

She had faintings and hysterics, and said she couldn't live without him, though everybody in Yorkburg knew she could, and easy enough. He withouther, 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 mancould stand Mrs. Gaines all the time without something to help, andeverybody 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 hewas dead sure enough, and Mrs. Gaines put on the longest cr�pe veil everseen in the South, she said. It touched the hem of her skirt in frontand behind; but she cut it in half after everybody had seen it oftenenough to know how long it was. 

If Augustus Gaines thought she was going to ruin her eyes and choke herlungs by wearing unhealthy cr�pe over her face he thought wrong, shesaid, 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 overleaving 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 bemarried from their house. Her brothers want her to be married fromtheirs. 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 inhers; and everybody in Yorkburg--I mean the coat-of-armseverybodies--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 bemarried from her house, which is the Orphan Asylum, though the ceremonywill be at the church. It's going to be in the morning at twelveo'clock, so they can take the two-o'clock train for Richmond and go onto New York. 

Miss Katherine wants it to be quiet, but it can't be quiet. There'snothing on human legs that can use them who won't be at the church tosee that wedding take place. 

Everybody has been paying her a lot of attention of late. It's realstrange what a difference a man makes in a marriage, even if he isn'tnoticed much in person at the time. If he's rich and prominent, everybody is so pleasant and sociable you'd think they were realintimate. If he's just good and poor, few take notice. 

When Miss Vickie Toones married Mr. Joe Blake they didn't get hardly anypresents. They had a lot of dead relations who used to be rich andhaughty, but their living ones are as poor as the people they didn'tused to know, and hardly anybody gave them anything handsome. 

Miss Katherine's presents are just amazing, and my eyes are blistered bythe 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 whodoesn'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'dlike to borrow a dog to see if he knows whether I am myself or somebodyelse. And another thing I'd like to find out is, How do other peopleknow so much?

Mrs. Philip Creekmore has a cousin whose wife's brother lives in thesame place Uncle Parke does, and Miss Amelia Cokeland wrote out thereand found out all about him. But it doesn't matter whether she trulyknows 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 grandtime telling more things about Uncle Parke than Miss Katherine will everlearn in this world. 

My dress is finished. I'm to be Maiden of Honor. There are nobridesmaids. Think of it! Me, Mary Cary, once just flesh and bloodmechanical, now a living creature who is to wear a white Swiss dress anda sash with pink rosebuds on it, and walk up the church aisle with myarms full of roses. And--magnificent gloriousness! most beautiful ofall!--every girl in this Asylum is to have a white dress and a sash thecolor she likes best to wear to the wedding. That's my wedding gift tothe girls. Uncle Parke gave it to me. 

Miss Katherine's California brother and his wife have come. I don't likethem. He looks bored to death, and chews the end of his mustache tillyou wonder there's any left. As for her, she's the limit. Maybe that'swhat's the matter with him. 

She seems to be afraid some of us might touch her, and she stares as ifwe were figures in a china-shop. No more says good-morning than if wewere. 

She wears seven rings on one hand and four on another, and rustles sowhen she walks she sounds like a churner out of order. If she isn't abulgarian born, she's bought herself into being one, for she oozesmoney. It's the only thing you think of when she's around. You canactually smell it. I think Miss Katherine is sorry they came. She don'tsay 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 comedown the aisle together. I reach up to his elbow, and he says he may putme in his pocket. I wish he would. I know I will be that frightened I'dbe glad to get in it. 

He wants to know all about Yorkburg and the people, and to-day Miss Braylet me take him all around the town and show him the antiquities. Heasked 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 companymanners 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 likeI 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 therehe 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 knowthem. " And I started on. 

I came near forgetting, and saying, "That is Alden house, where mygrandfather used to live, " but I remembered in time. I don't acknowledgemy grandfather, and I knew somebody else would tell him Uncle Parke wasborn and lived there until he went West. 

We had a grand time. We stayed out over four hours, and I forgot allabout dinner. He didn't want to go in when I suddenly remembered andtold him I must, and then he said I was going to take dinner with him atthe Colonial. He'd asked Miss Bray, and it was all right. And that'swhat I did. Took dinner with him at the Colonial!

I tell you, Mary Martha Cary had what you could truly call a Time. AndDoctor Willwood said he never had enjoyed a morning in his life likethat one. Laugh? I never heard a man laugh so hearty. Half the time Icouldn't tell why. I'd be real serious, but he'd look at me and almostdie 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 thislife, even death; and time is the only thing that keeps on just thesame. 

They're gone. Gone on their bridal tour, and the happiness that's leftYorkburg would run a family for a long life. I wish everybody could haveseen that wedding. It's going to be long remembered, for the earth andsky, and birds and flowers, and trees and sunshine all took part. Everything tried to help, and as for blessings on them, they took awayenough for the human race. But now it's over I feel like my firstballoon 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 thatfixed it was a beauty. Every bird in Yorkburg was singing, every flowerwas blooming, and every heart was blessing; and when those fifty-eightorphans walked in, all in white and two by two, every hand was droppingroses. And that is what each girl was wishing: Roses, roses all herlife!

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'mdoing my best, " I was saying to both. And I was, but I was thankful whenI got to where I could stop, for my legs were so excited I wouldn't havebeen surprised if they'd turned and run out. 

Behind me came Miss Katherine, on her Army brother's arm. He's as niceas the other isn't. He hasn't got the money-making disease. When UncleParke and Doctor Willwood came out of the vestry-room Uncle Parke gaveme one look, just one, but it was so understanding I winked back, andthen he came farther down and stood by Miss Katherine like she was hisuntil kingdom come, forever more. Amen. 

Then the minister began, and the music was so soft you could hear thebirds outside. The breeze through the window blew right on MissKatherine's veil, and I was so busy watching it I didn't know the timehad come to pray, and I hardly got my head bent before I had to take itup again. Then the minister was through, and I was walking down theaisle with Doctor Willwood, and in just about two minutes more we wereback at the Asylum, and it was all over--the thing we'd been lookingforward to so long. 

The Asylum looked real nice that morning. There were bushels and bushelsof flowers in it, for everybody in town who had any sent them. Flowerscover a multitude of poverties. The reception was grand. That CaliforniaRichness called it a breakfast, but that was pure style. Yorkburg don'thave breakfast between twelve and one, and everybody else called it areception. As for the people at it, there were more kinds than were everin one dining-room before; and every single one had a good time. Everyone. 

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 alikethan people think, she said she was going to invite to her weddingwhoever she wanted. And she did. 

There wasn't one invited who didn't come: the bent and the broke and theblind (that's true, for old Mr. Forbes is bent, and Mrs. Rowe's hip wasbroken and she uses crutches, and Bobbie Anderson is blind); and theold, that's the high-born coat-of-arms kind; and the new, that's theReagans and Hinchmans and some others, and Mr. Pinkert the shoemaker, who, she says, is a gentleman if he don't remember his grandfather'sname; and Miss Ginnie Grant, who made her underclothes--all were there. All. It was a different wedding from any that was ever before inYorkburg, and if any feelings were hurt it was because they were tryingto be. Some feelings are kept for that purpose. 

Of course, Mrs. Christopher Pryor had remarks to make. "Katherine alwayswas too independent, " I heard her tell Miss Queechy Spence. "But I don'tbelieve in anything of the kind. If you once let people get out of theplace they were born in, there'll be no doing anything with them. Youmark me, if this wedding don't make trouble. Some of these people willexpect to be invited to my house next. " And she took another helping ofsalad that was enough for three. She's an awful eater. 

"Oh no, they won't, " said Miss Queechy. "They know better than to expectanything like that of you, " and she gave me a little wink and walked offwith Mr. Morris, who's her beau. I went off, too. It isn't safe forMartha Cary to be too near Mrs. Pryor, for Mary never knows what shemay do. 

And, oh, you ought to have seen Miss Bray! She was stepsister to theQueen of Sheba. Solomon never had a wife arrayed like she was on thattwenty-seventh day of June. I believe she is engaged to Doctor Rudd. Ireally do. 

You see, after people got over teasing him about that make-believewedding, he got to thinking about her. He's bound to know he isn't muchof 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 agrand manager on little. 

He was at the wedding, too. His beard was flowinger and redder, and thepart in the back of his head shininger than ever. He had an eleganttime. He was so full of himself you would have thought it was his ownparty. 

Uncle Parke and Aunt Katherine have been on the ocean three days. Iwonder if they are sick. I don't think I will go to Europe with mychildren's father. I was seasick once on land, and there wasn't a humanbeing I even liked that day. It would be bad to find out so soon thatthe very sight of your husband makes you ill. After you know himbetter, you could tell him to go off somewhere; but at first I supposeyou have to be polite. 

They were awful nice about wanting me to go with them. The bride andgroom were. They said I had to, and they were so surprised when I said Icouldn'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. Therewasn't anything to do, and here I am. Here I'm going to be, too, untilthe first day of October, when they will be back, and we will start forthe West, for Michigan. 

I'm going to like Michigan. I've decided before I get there. I knowthere will be something to like, there always is in every place andevery person, Miss Katherine says, if you just will see it instead ofthe all wrong. I was by nature born critical. There are a lot of thingsI don't like in this world, but there's no use in mentioning them. Asfor 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 toVirginia the best to live in. They couldn't, _couldn't_ expect me tothink it was like Virginia!

Perhaps, after a while, Uncle Parke may come back. For over two hundredyears his people have lived here, and sometimes I believe he feels justlike that dog did who had his call in him. The call of the place thatthe first dogs came from, that wild, free place, and I think Uncle Parkewants to come back, wants to be with his own people. 

Out West is very convenient, though, Peggy Green says. She has an auntwho used to live out there, and she told her you could do as you choosein almost everything. If husbands and wives didn't like each other, there was no trouble in getting new ones. They could get a divorce andmarry somebody else. 

I wonder what a divorce is. We've never had one in Yorkburg, and I neverknew until the other day that when you got married it wasn't reallytruly permanent. I thought it was for ever and ever and until deathparted. 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 notmeant. Maybe when I find out I will be all the gladder to come back toYorkburg, where people don't seem to know much about these new-fashionedthings. Where they still believe in the old ones, and just live on anddon't hurry, and are kind and polite and dear, if they are slow andqueer and proud a little bit. 

It makes me have such a funny feeling in my throat when I think aboutgoing away. I'm trying not to think. But I do. Think all the time. Iwant this summer to be the happiest the children ever had. It's the lastfor me. That sounds consumptive, but I don't mean that way. I mean it'smy last Orphan summer. 

Of course, I'm glad, awful glad; but I'm so sorry the other childrenaren't going, too. For them it's prunes and blue-and-white calico tolook forward to until they're eighteen. Year in and year out, prunes andcalico. 

But maybe it isn't. If Mary Cary will do her part something nicer mayhappen. She doesn't know yet the way to make it happen, having nothingmuch to send back but love. Somebody says love finds the way. Oh, MaryCary, you and Love _must_ find a way!

THE END