Mary Cary / Frequently Martha""

like the parlor grate w

From the time we got up until we went to bed we were so happy we forgot we were Charity

e from you, and it's one of the best possessions you can have. I thin

ide. Even me, who might as well be that man in the Bible, Melche

idn't want the girls to know, several not getting mo

n't have the heart. Being so busy with their own they forgot to remember, and if it hadn't

an things, she being in the wild West near the Indians who made the

ch money; but Miss Katherine says busy people make

And in them she put a little note that made me cry and cry and cry, it was so de

e writes, and I wonder why she wrote that note. Bu

and misfortune and suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm stifferer than a lamp-post, and you

ow I had so many friends in Yorkburg, and my heart was so bu

rrands, or messages, or passing; and as I know almost everybody by sight, I have a right large

and some short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it

ing in it. As for its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's

Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. A little red mixed in might wake Yorkburg up

sband has been dead forty years, but she still keeps his hat on the rack for protection, a

tended so long that he's living that they say she reall

cherry-bounce for Eliza Green, who had an awful pai

pounding on the floor with her st

me down! There's some one at the doo

. "Miss Bray sent me, Mrs. Peet

come down. It's just little Mary Cary." And she

ight," she said. "He's taken f

n't have been surprised. It's certainly strange how something you know isn't true seems true; an

which is in the churchyard right next to where she lives; but at night he co

im my love, and ask how his rheumatism is. I tell you, Mar

Christmas present, too. A pair of mittens. Sh

to spend on the children's Christmas, but it must have been a corker. The things she b

lor, and some curtains for the

at a table with only ten at it instead of forty, as I'd been sitting for many years, was t

as to feel like the Queen of Sheba, and I felt like her. I could have danced up and down the tab

worsted, not calico; and that morning after breakfast, and after everything

fire as the

d and roared. Oh, it knew it was Christmas, that fire did,

dresses made like other children's that they weren't natural, so I pretende

sand years-that the stiffness went. And if in all Yorkburg there was a cheerfuller room or a happier lo

s Christmas so was becaus

Christmas after Christmas is like cold buckwheat cakes

rs leading into the sewing-room were opened. But never being able to stay dumb long, I

brother's money were things we could keep. Not things to put away and pass on to somebody else next year. I almost had a fit when I found I ha

such a short time she kept quiet, and just saw how things were done. And not done. But this year she asked if she could provide the e

e is so muc

ld that day, and I didn't come out of that cloud of

d ladies to see the tree and things, an

ve had as good a dinner, a handsomer tree, and as many presents as some well-off people. It's all nonsense, putting notio

gorous that the little jet ornaments on her bo

That He lets the rain fall and sun shine on everybody alike is a thing she don't approve of either. As for poor peopl

e gives away. Everything else she holds on to with such a grip that it keeps her upper

in off her fatness; and she goes in so at the waist, coming out top and bottom, tha

lace Hen-House. There is a husband, but nobody seems to n

urch. Mrs. Pryor is. She leads all the responses; and as for the chants

came right down to earth and was Martha Cary in a minute. I'd been Mary all day,

yet have let a child here forget she was a Charity chi

ed at the way Martha spoke, so serious and unlike the way she usually speaks when mad, that I had t

it ruin my beauti

derstood. He let the Christ-child be born poor and lowly, so He could understand about Charity children, and everyb

e a beautiful Christmas. That I'd helped everybody and kept things from dragging, because I

, thanking me, little Mary Cary, who hadn't done a

ything just for love. Which shows it was a dreamland, for on earth there're Brays and Pryors, and people too busy to be kind.