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.