“Mother thought you might be cold,” he said. I put on the jacket, and he took Mary Elizabeth and me by the hand, and we walked slowly back down Wisconsin Street. “We will see Mary Elizabeth safely home first,” my Father said, and we accompanied her to the New Family’s door. Once in our house, it was I who proposed going to bed, and the suggestion met with no opposition. Upstairs, I slipped the screen from my window and leaned out in the dusk. The night, warm, fragrant, significant, was inviting me to belong to it, was asking me, even as bright day had asked me, what it had in common with the stuffiness and dulness of forever watching others do things. Something hard touched my hand. It was my birthday dollar. It had not occurred to me to spend it. I saw my Father stroll back down the street, lighting a cigar. Below stairs I could hear my Mother helping to put away the supper dishes. A dozen boys raced through the alley, just on their way down town. So long as they came home at a stated hour at night, and turned up at table with their hands clean, who asked them where they had been? “Where have you been?” they said to me, the moment I entered the house--and to Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty. We had often talked about it. And none of us had even ridden on a load of hay. We had a vague expectation that it would be different when we grew up. A sickening thought came to me: _Would it be different, or was this to be forever?_ I ran blindly down the stairs where my Mother was helping to put away the supper dishes--in the magic of the night, helping to put away the supper dishes. “Mother!” I cried, “Mother! Who made it so much harder to be a girl?” She turned and looked at me, her face startled, and touched me--I remember how gently she touched me. “Before you die,” she said, “it will be easier.” I thought then that she meant that I would grow used to it. Now I know that she meant what I meant when I woke that night, and remembered my dolls lying out in the grass and the dew, and was not sorry, but glad: Glad that the time was almost come--for real playthings. XII BIT-BIT At the Rodmans’, who lived in a huge house on a hill, some of the rooms had inscriptions in them--or what I should have called mottoes--cunningly lettered and set about. Some of these were in Margaret Amelia’s and Betty’s room, above the mirror, the bed, the window; and there was one downstairs on a panel above the telephone. The girls said that they had an aunt who had written them “on purpose,” an aunt who had had stories in print. In my heart I doubted the part about the printed stories, and so did Mary Elizabeth, but we loved Margaret Amelia and Betty too well to let this stand between us. Also, we were caught by the inscriptions. They were these: FOR A CRADLE[A] I cannot tell you who I am Nor what I’m going to be. You who are wise and know your ways Tell me. [A] Copyright, 1908, by Harper & Brothers. FOR THE MIRROR