<h2><SPAN name="III" id="III"></SPAN>III</h2>
<h2>MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Forbidden things are so much nicer than unforbidden.
I love to do them until they're
done.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>The man-servant opened the door and looked
at us as if weary and surprised, and said nothing.</p>
<p>"Is Mrs. Reagan in?" I asked.</p>
<p>"She is."</p>
<p>That's all he said. He waited. I waited.
Then I stepped forward.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>She stopped in the doorway, and had we
come from leper-land she couldn't have held
herself farther off.</p>
<p>"What are you doing in here?" she asked,
and she tried the haughty air—"What are you
doing in here?"</p>
<p>"We were waiting for you," I said. "We
have a message from Miss Jones."</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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