Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is Mrs. Reagan in?" I asked.

"She is."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV

THE STEPPED-ON AND THE STEPPERS

I don't believe I ever have written anything about my first years at this Asylum. I am naturally a wandering person. Well, I was happy. I know I've said that before, but Miss Katherine says that's one of the few things you can say often.

I had a kitten, and a chicken which I killed by mistake. I took it to the pump to wash it, and it lost its breath and died. I still put flowers on the place where its grave was.

It was my first to die. I have lost many others since: a cat, and a rabbit, and a rooster called Napoleon because he was so strutty and domineering to his wives. I didn't put up anything to his grave. I didn't think the hens would like it. They just despised him.

Then there were the remains of Rebecca Baker. She was of rags, with button eyes and no teeth, just marks for them; but I loved her very much. I kept her as long as there was anything to hold her by; but after legs and arms went, and the back of her head got so thin from lack of sawdust that she had neuralgia all the time, I found her dead one morning, and buried her at once.

I loved Rebecca Baker: not for looks, but for comfort. I could talk to her without fear of her telling. She always knew how hungry I was, and how I hated oatmeal without sugar, and she never talked back.

During the years from three to nine I lived just mechanical, except on the inside. I got up to a bell and cleaned to a bell, and sat down to eat to a bell; rose to a bell, went to school to a bell, came out to a bell, worked to a bell, sewed to a bell, played to a bell, said my prayers to a bell, got in bed to a bell, and the next day and every day did the same thing over to the same old bell.

But when I marry my children's father there are to be no bells in the house we live in. Only buttons, with no particular time to be pressed.

We go to church to a bell, too; that, is to Sunday-school. We always go to St. John's Sunday-school--Episcopal. The man who left this place put it in his will that we had to, but we go to all the other churches. Episcopal the first Sunday, Methodist the second, Presbyterian the third, and Baptist the fourth, and when we get through we begin all over again.

We go to church like we do everything else, two by two. Start at a tap of that same old bell, and march along like wooden figures wound up; and the people who see us don't think we are really truly children or like theirs, except in shape inside. They think we just love our hideous clothes, and that we ought to be thankful for molasses and bread-and-milk every night in the week but one, and if we're not, we're wicked. Rich people think queer things.

Sundays at the Humane are terribly religious.

They begin early and last until after supper, and if anybody is sorry when Sunday is over, it's never been mentioned out loud. We have prayers and Bible-reading before breakfast every day, but on Sundays longer. Then we go to Sunday-school, where some of the children stare at us like we were foreign heathen who have come to get saved. Some nudge each other and laugh. But real many are nice and sweet, and I just love that little Minnie Dawes, who sits in front of me. She wears the prettiest hats in Yorkburg, and I get lots of ideas from them. I trim hats in my mind all the time Miss Sallie is talking--Miss Sallie is our teacher.

She is a good lady, Miss Sallie Ray is. Her chief occupation is religion, and as for going to church, it's the true joy of her life. She's in love with Mr. Benson, the Superintendent, and very regular at all the services. So is he.

But for teaching children Miss Sallie wasn't meant. She really wasn't. She never surely knows the lesson herself, and it was such fun asking her all sorts of questions just to see her flounder round for answers that I used to pretend I wanted to know a lot of things I didn't. But I don't do that now. It was like punching a lame cat to see it hop, and I stopped.

She don't ask me anything, either. Never has since the day Mr. Benson came in our class and asked for a little review, and Martha Cary made trouble, of course.

Miss Sallie was so red and excited by Mr. Benson sitting there beside her that she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't, or she wouldn't have asked me questions, knowing I never say the things I ought. But after a minute she did ask me, fanning just as hard as she could. It was in January.

"Now, Mary Cary, tell us something of the people we have been studying about this winter," she said, "Mention something of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Peter and Paul. Who was Abraham?"

"Abraham was a coward," I said.

"A what?" And her voice was a little shriek. "A what?"

"A coward. He was! He passed his wife off for his sister, fearing trouble for himself, and not thinking of consequences for her."

"That will do," she said, and she fanned harder than ever, and looked real frightened at Mr. Benson, who was blowing his nose. "Susie Rice, who was Jacob?"

Susie didn't know. Nobody knew, so I spoke again.

"Jacob was a rascal. He deceived his father and stole from his brother. But he prospered and repented, and died prominent."

Mr. Benson got up and said he believed his nose was bleeding, and went out quick, and since then Miss Sallie has never asked me a single question. Not one.

Now I wonder what made Martha speak out like that? Abraham and Jacob were good men who did some bad things, but generally only their goodness is mentioned. While you're living it's apt to be the other way.

But I'm glad the bad is overlooked in time. Maybe that is what God will do with everybody. He'll wipe out all the wrongness and meanness, and see through it to the good. I hope that's the way it's going to be, for that's my only chance.

Since Miss Sallie stopped asking me anything, and I her, I have a lovely time in my mind taking things off the other children and putting them on the Orphans. There's Margaret Evans. In the winter she's always blue and frozen, and I'd give her that Mallory child's velvet coat and gray muff and tippet, and put Margaret's blue cape and calico dress on her.

Poor little Margaret! She's so humble and thankful she gets even less than the rest, it looks like, though I suppose in clothes she has the same allowance, and the difference, maybe, is in herself.