Kate Langley Bosher

“ And if I let a chance slip to worry Miss Bray I was sorry for it; but that was before I understood her, and before Miss Katherine came. Since Miss Katherine came I know it's yourself that matters most, not where you live or where you came from, and I'm thinking a little more of Mary Cary than I used to, though in a different way. As for Miss Bray, I truly try at times to forget she's living.
But she's taught me a good deal about Human Nature, Miss Bray has. About the side I didn't know. It's a pity there are things we have to know. I think I will make a special study of Human Nature. ”

“ And a thing on your mind is worse than the toothache. One you can tell, the other you can't. A thing you can't tell is like a spook that's always behind you, and right in the bed with you when you wake up sudden, and lies down with you every time you go to sleep. I know, for that letter is on my mind.
When I got out of Miss Bray's room I ran in mine, Miss Katherine being out, and locked the door, and I said:
"Mary Martha Cary, don't ever say again there's no such things as modern miracles. There's been a miracle to-day, and you have seen it. Somebody has been born over." ”

“ Miss Katherine has put her in the hospital-room, and is staying in there with her.
I am all alone by myself to-night. I don't like aloneness at night. It makes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherine says is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseases put together.
She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often different from the way other people feel about it. And when you don't agree with people, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don't agree with you. ”

“ A home without it is hell."
"Mercy, Mary!" Uncle Parke jumped. "Don't use such strong language. It isn't nice."
"But it's true. I read it in a book, and I've watched the Rices. When there's love enough you can stand anything. When there isn't, you can stand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn't know, and love can't keep still. It's got to grow or die." ”

“ I couldn't make any one understand what Miss Katherine has done for us since she's been here. Some words don't tell things. The nursing when we're sick is only a part, and though she's fixed up one of the rooms just like a hospital-room, with everything so white and clean and sweet in it that it's real joy to be sick, we're not sick often. ”

“ When I found out it wasn't so—that your sin did make you suffer, and that it did make a difference trying to do right—I felt some of my old Martha-ry scornfulness slipping away. And I got down on my knees, no words, but God understanding why.
I don't like any kind of bitterness in my heart. I'd rather like people. But can you like a deceiver? You can't.
Dr. Parke Alden has taken no more notice of me than if I were a Juney-bug.
I wonder if Miss Katherine will ever marry. She wasn't meant to live in an Orphan Asylum. ”

“ She doesn't know me except from what Miss Katherine writes, and I wonder why she wrote that note. But everybody is good to me—that is, nearly everybody.
It certainly makes a difference in your backbone when people are kind and when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune and suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm stifferer than a lamp-post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when any one is good to me, I haven't a bit of firmness, and am no better than a caterpillar. ”

“ Nobody much is when you know them too well. It is a good thing for your pride when you keep a diary, specially when you are truthful in it. Each day that you leave out is an evidence of character—poor character—for it shows how careless and put-off-y you are; both of which I am.
But it isn't much in life to be an inmate of a Humane Association, or a Home, or an Asylum, or whatever name you call the place where job-lot charity children live. And that's what I am, an Inmate. Inmates are like malaria and dyspepsia: something nobody wants and every place has. ”

“ By the end of the week a whole lot more will be known about Uncle Parke than he knows about himself. If Yorkburg had a coat of arms it ought to be a question-mark.
They've had time to talk over everything that ever happened since Adam and Eve left Paradise, in the long walks they take, and in the evenings when he calls, which he does as regular as night comes. And now I'm waiting for the news. I'll have to be so surprised. And I guess I will be. Love does very surprising things.
Miss Katherine knew where Uncle Parke was all the time. ”

“ Miss Katherine wants it to be quiet, but it can't be quiet. There's nothing on human legs that can use them who won't be at the church to see that wedding take place.
Everybody has been paying her a lot of attention of late. It's real strange what a difference a man makes in a marriage, even if he isn't noticed much in person at the time. If he's rich and prominent, everybody is so pleasant and sociable you'd think they were real intimate. If he's just good and poor, few take notice. ”

“ They always save me some of whatever they make, which I get the next day. But if I could rise out of bed and eat as much as I want out of that chafing-dish, there would be a funeral Miss Bray would like to attend. The corpse would be Mary Cary, died Martha.
There is a screen at the foot of my bed, put there so the light won't bother me and so I won't be seen. And, thinking I am asleep, Miss Katherine and Miss Webb talk on as if I were dead; and it's very interesting the things they talk about. ”

“ She hasn't much sense, Mary Cary hasn't, but enough to know wedding trips are personal, and, besides, the girls have turned into regular weepers. Every time anything is said about going away their eyes water up, and Martha feels like a yellow dog with no tail. I know they hate Miss Katherine's going; but why do they cry about my going? Lord, this is a strange place to live in, this world is! I wonder what heaven will be like?
Miss Bray is much better. She says Uncle Parke has cured her. ”

“ We all like the Methodist minister. I don't think he knows many dead languages. He don't have much time to study, being so busy helping people; but he knows how to talk to us children, and he always makes me wish I wasn't so bad. He always does, and the Mary part of me just rises right up on his Sunday, and Martha is ashamed of herself. He believes in getting better by the love way. So do I.
Miss Katherine is going away next week to stay two months. ”

“ He soon had Miss Bray and Miss Jones and a lot of the girls out in the yard, and everybody was talking at once; and then I heard him say:
"But I tell you, Miss Bray, I put 'em here, right on this woodpile. And where are they? You run this place, and you are responsible for—"
"Not for pants." And Miss Bray's voice was so shrill it sounded like a broken whistle. "I'm responsible for no man's pants. When a man can't take care of his pants, he shouldn't have them. Besides, you shouldn't have left yours in the woodhouse when working in a Female Orphan Asylum." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I wonder what a man says to a lady when he wants her to marry him? I know Dr. Parke Alden isn't the kind to get down on his knees. If he were, Miss Katherine would certainly tell him to get up and say what he had to say standing, or sitting, if it took long. But I'll never know what he said. They're not the kind to tell; but they can't hide Love. It's just like the sun. It can't help shining. ”

“ With some people, Miss Katherine says, that's the safest kind to have.
You see, Yorkburg is a very small place. Just three long streets and some short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it hasn't got three thousand people in it. A lot of them are colored.
But it's very old and historic. Awful old; so is everything in it. As for its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's more in Yorkburg than any place of its size in America.
Most of the strangers who come here, though, seem to prefer to pass on rather than stop, and Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. ”

“ Episcopal the first Sunday, Methodist the second, Presbyterian the third, and Baptist the fourth, and when we get through we begin all over again.
We go to church like we do everything else, two by two. Start at a tap of that same old bell, and march along like wooden figures wound up; and the people who see us don't think we are really truly children or like theirs, except in shape inside. They think we just love our hideous clothes, and that we ought to be thankful for molasses and bread-and-milk every night in the week but one, and if we're not, we're wicked. Rich people think queer things. ”

“ Forbidden things are so much nicer than unforbidden. I love to do them until they're done.
The Asylum is on King Street, almost at the very end, and there isn't much passing, just the Tates and the Gordons and a few others living farther on. The dining-room is in the basement, half below the ground, and on cloudy days the lamps have to be lighted—that is, they used to. Now we have electric lights, and I just love to turn them on. It's such a grand way to get a thing done, just to press a button. ”

“ I know I am not unthankful, and I would much rather have a Father and Mother on earth than to have them in heaven, but I guess I should have kept my preferences to myself. Somehow preferences seem to make people mad. ”

“ But I believe that's the reason Miss Katherine don't get married. Because in her secret heart Dr. Parke Alden is still her sweetheart. I know in his secret heart she is still his. She's bound to be if she ever once was.
Glorious superbness! Wouldn't that be grand? If they were to get married she would be my really, truly Aunt! The very thought makes me so full of thrills I can't sit still when it comes over me.
Oh, Mary Martha Cary, what a beautiful place this world could be!
XII A TRUE MIRACLE
secret isn't any pleasure. ”

“ It isn't safe for Martha Cary to be too near Mrs. Pryor, for Mary never knows what she may do.
And, oh, you ought to have seen Miss Bray! She was stepsister to the Queen of Sheba. Solomon never had a wife arrayed like she was on that twenty-seventh day of June. I believe she is engaged to Doctor Rudd. I really do.
You see, after people got over teasing him about that make-believe wedding, he got to thinking about her. He's bound to know he isn't much of a man, and no young girl would have him, so lately he's been ambling 'round Miss Bray. If he can stand her, he'll do well to get her. ”

“ Those who had the heart to give them didn't have the money, and those who had the money didn't have the heart. Being so busy with their own they forgot to remember, and if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine and her friends this last Christmas would have been like all others. ”

“ We walked on down to the Calverton road, talking about nothing, and making out it was our usual night walk, but when we got to the seven maples Uncle Parke stopped.
"Suppose we sit down," he said. "It's too warm to walk far to-night." And after we sat he threw his hat on the ground, then leaned over and took my hands in his.
"Mary Cary," he began. And though his eyes were smiling, his voice was real quivering. I was noticing, and it was. "Mary Cary, Katherine and I have brought you with us to-night to ask if you have any objection to our being married. ”