City and town life -- Fiction; Gossip -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
"You've taken /what?/" Miss Gibbie bounced half-way out of her
chair.
"Tea." Mary Cary's head nodded affirmatively. "That's what I said,
tea--I mean supper. I invited myself to some of the places, but some
of the people invited me themselves. I'm afraid I did hint a little. But
we had a good time, and I've got my little piece of paper--see!"
She held a note-book toward Miss Gibbie, but the latter waved it back.
"Do you mean you sat down at the table and ate with them?"
"That's what I did. It would have been better could they have sat down
at my table and eaten with me, for then I could have selected the things
to eat, and food makes such a difference in a man's feelings. But there
isn't such a great difference in people when you know them through and
through, and I had a lovely time taking supper with them. I really did.
I told you about the Milligans. Don't you remember I was sick the next
day?"
Miss Gibbie shook her head. "Never told me. Glad you were sick."
"Not sick enough to hurt, or to keep me from the Mowrys the next night.
The Mowrys didn't have but four kinds of bread and three kinds of cake
and two kinds of meats and some other things, but you couldn't see a
piece of Mrs. Milligan's table-cloth as big as a salt-cellar, it was so
full of food. I took some of everything on the table. Mr. Milligan kept
handing me things from his end and Mrs. Milligan from her end, and the
little Milligans from the sides, and we laughed so much and I tried so
hard to eat I got really excited about it, and of course I was sick the
next day. But it didn't matter. We had a beautiful time, and I learned
things I never knew before."
She dropped on her knees by the older woman and crossed her arms on
her lap. "When I was a little girl, Miss Gibbie, and lived here in the
asylum, I used to wish I was a fairy or a witch or a wizard, or
something that could make great changes, could turn things round and
upside down; could put poor people where were rich, put sad ones where
were happy, put the lowly where were the high, and see what they would
do. And in the years I have been away, almost ten years, I have been
thinking and watching and wondering if half the trouble in the world is
not from misunderstanding, from not knowing each other better. And how
can we know if each stays in his own little world, never touches the
other's life?" She laughed, nodding her head. "I wouldn't discuss
Flaubert with Mr. Milligan or Greek Art with Mr. Chinn, but they can
tell me a good deal about Yorkburg's needs; and, after all, a person's
heart is more important than his head. We are educating people at a
terrible rate, but what are we going to do about it if we're not friends
when we're through? Of course you can't see my way. You hate dirty
people to come near you, but how get them clean if we keep from them?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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