I don't like her, but I feel sorry for her, for nobody really loves her, and it must be awful to have nobody to love you best of all on earth. I couldn't live if nobody loved me. I could not. I might live without food and live without drink, and do without clothes and do without air--the right kinds of those things, I mean--but I couldn't and I wouldn't live without loving. As long as I am on this little planet I expect to love a lot of people and I hope they will love me in return. When Miss Bettie makes me so mad I have to go out of the room to keep from saying things I shouldn't, and Miss Araminta simpers so when any one mentions Mr. Sparks's name (he's the new widower minister of the Presbyterian church, with no chance of escape), and Elizabeth Hamilton Carter makes me ashamed of my sex, and I feel like I have swallowed concentrated extract of Human Peculiarities, I remember that not one of them has a father of any sort, much less my sort, or a precious mother and two dandy sisters and a good many nice relations and some bully friends--when I remember all that, remember how many I have to love me, I spit out the peculiarities and try not to mind them, try to see how funny they are. But sometimes the taste sticks right long. I don't suppose I spit right. What I can't understand is that if people want to be loved--and everybody does--why in the name of goodness don't they do a little loving on their own account? You needn't expect to get what you don't give. I'm glad I was born with a taste for liking, though I don't like every one, by a jugful. When I come across a righteous hypocrite I get out of the way, if it isn't convenient to make the hypocrite get out of mine. There are some people I could never congeal with and I am never even going to try. CHAPTER XIX