Mary Cary: "Frequently Martha"Bosher, Kate Langley
General
Mary Cary: "Frequently Martha"
Bosher, Kate Langley
Children -- Juvenile fiction; Orphans -- Juvenile fiction
I'm always intending to stand still in front of the glass long enough to
see what I do look like, but I'm always in such a hurry I don't have
time. I know my eyes are blue, for Miss Katherine said this morning they
got bigger and bluer every day, and if I didn't eat more I'd be nothing
but eyes. If you don't like a thing, can you eat it? You cannot. That
is, in summer you can't. In winter it's a little easier.
I never have understood how Miss Katherine could have come to an Orphan
Asylum to live and to eat Orphan Asylum meals when she could have eaten
the best in Yorkburg. And Yorkburg's best is the best on earth.
Everybody says that who's tried other places, even Miss Webb, who gets
right impatient with Yorkburg's slowness and enjoyment of itself.
And Miss Katherine is living here from pure choice. That's what she is
doing, and she's made living creatures of us, just like God did when He
breathed on Adam and woke him up.
At the hospital she used to ask me all about the Asylum, and, never
guessing why, I told her all I knew, except about Miss Bray. Miss
Katherine had known the Asylum all her life, but had only been in it
twice--just passing it by, not thinking. When I got better and could
talk 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 of
underclothes we wore in winter, and how many times a week we bathed all
over; when we got up, and what we studied, and how long we sewed each
day, and how long we played, and when we went to bed--and all sorts of
other things. I wondered why she wanted to know, and when I found out I
could 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 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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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