The Girl: An Autobiography: Childhood

JUNE, 1916

BY KATHERINE KEITH

I

The minister was coming to dinner. Grandmother Crosby sent for me, so Olga put on my second-best dress and we drove over to the house in my pony cart. Lizzie opened the door for us. Her cheeks always made me think of the scum which formed on my glass of hot milk. They were slick and white, with tiny lacy wrinkles. She wore a black dress with a high starched collar. Once I had been upstairs in her room on the fourth floor. My locket came unfastened, and when I picked it up my nails were filled with fine grit, and several long black hairs were wound about the chain. She shook me quite roughly when she saw them, and snatched the necklace out of my hand.

The minister was stout and short of breath. He darted his eyes round suddenly, and, when he thought no one was watching, jerked his forefinger to one nostril, and sniffed shrilly through the other. If somebody looked at him unexpectedly, he grew quite red, and made a queer, chuckling noise in his throat, trying to imitate the shrill sound.

During dinner he sat in grandpa’s place at the foot of the table. Grandmother was at the other end, behind the great silver tea-kettle. Nobody paid any attention to me, and so I sat in my high chair, whispering softly, ‘There were Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, and Abel got killed. — Dr. Gordon,’ I asked abruptly, ‘who did Cain marry?’

The minister set his cup down with a sharp little click, and, looking at grandmother, ran his fingers quickly through his hair.

‘There are some pages missing from that particular portion of Genesis,’ he said.

I did not like him, and was glad when Olga came to take me home.

Going away to heaven was different from going away to New York. People left their watches and their long fur coats and their Bibles at home. These were given to others. You were silly if you cried and protested as you saw the things being carried off by their new owners. He to whom they belonged was not coming back to ask for them. He would not use them again.

One day, while we were walking, Olga looked across the tracks at the lake. ‘That is where poor grandfather is,’ she said.

When we came home, I was crying. Mother told me that grandfather had gone to heaven. She sent me upstairs, and then she called Olga quite sharply. I did not hear what they talked about, but Olga shook me when she returned. Then she cried all day.

Several mornings later we were going down to grandma’s. When mother opened the front door, a man was passing with newspapers under his arm. He was shouting loudly. Mother jerked me back and closed the door again until he had passed by.

Before we reached Grandmother Crosby’s we had to push our way through a crowd of people. The street was filled with carriages. Some had men standing on the rims of the wheels. They craned their necks, and then stooped down and whispered to those beside them. Mother held me tightly by the shoulder. She had on a long black veil. As we were going up grandma’s steps, an old woman with a shawl over her head snatched at mother’s dress. She had a wilted pink flower in her hand. Her face was wet and dirty.

‘For him, ma’am, on his grave. Ach, Gott!’ she said.

Mother took it, and we went on, into the house.

Once when we were out, Olga bought me a sugar bun. She told me not to tell mother. I had eaten away the brown rim to the frosting when a little boy asked me for a penny. I gave him my bun. He did not eat the sugar part slowly, as I should have done. He crammed it all in at once. It made a big bump on his throat when he swallowed it. ‘ But he won’t taste the sweet,’ I said to Olga. ‘He is very hungry,’ she replied. Then she asked him some questions and took him home with us to have coffee down in the kitchen.

After that, I did not believe in heaven any more. I thought I should have to come back to earth and be hungry like the little boy. He would return and live in a big house, and have lots to eat, as I did.

I decided that Aunt Ethel’s baby must be grandpa. The stork brought him just after grandpa went away. Grandmother told me that grandpa was not always rich. He worked very hard when he was young, and so he would not have to be hungry when he came back. I made Olga walk with me beside the baby’s carriage, because I wanted to see if he looked like grandpa. Once auntie brought him to the house, and they left me alone for a few minutes, playing beside him on the floor.

‘Oh, grandpa,quickly!’ I said. ‘Talk to me now; they have all gone away.'

The baby stared and slowly blew a bubble on his lips. I held his shoulders so tightly that he finally began to cry. Then Aunt Ethel came back and took him home.

Sometimes I lived with grandmother. She always bathed me herself before she put me to bed. The bathtub was very long and deep. Grandmother stood on the step which ran beside it, with a big towel pinned about her. She held my neck tightly between her thumb and second finger, scrubbing me with her other hand. I slipped and fell from one side to the other, splashing the water high over the edges, so that, when she finally lifted me to the floor, the towel and her dress were drenched.

‘There,’ she would say, ‘that is hardly better than a sponging-off. You won’t sit still while I give you a real bath.’

I used to go to sleep wondering how she would give me a real bath.

For a long time I did not go over to see grandmother. Then, finally, Olga took me to her house again. Going upstairs and through the hall she made me walk very gently. Grandmother was lying in bed looking toward the door. When I saw her, I screamed loudly.

‘Silly little thing!’ she said. ‘She has never seen me lying down.’

She put out her hand on the blanket with the palm turned up. When I ran over and hid my face in it, she moved her fingers slowly once or twice across my cheek.

‘Stupid child,’ she murmured; but her voice sounded pleased, and she told me to climb up on the bed beside her.

Everything you did your guardian angel wrote down in a little golden notebook which she wore around her neck. If you had a great many good deeds, perhaps you would not have to be quite so hungry afterwards, even if you had been happy and had had enough to eat before you died. Maybe, too, you could give away some of your kind acts to people who had only a few.

I loved Miss Agatha. She was pretty, and her dresses were soft, with colors like a soap-bubble. But Olga said they dripped the blood of the poor. I could never see any blood, but after that I always tried not to touch them. The summer I met Miss Agatha we were staying at the sea-shore. There were hundreds of butterflies lying on the beach, which, falling into the water, had been washed up by the waves. I used to carry them carefully to the warm dry sand. All morning I would do this.

‘Please, God,’ I said, when Olga called me to go home, ‘tell Miss Agatha’s angel that these good deeds are for her!’

While we were at the shore, mother let me stay up for a dance at the hotel. I sat in the ballroom between Olga and a young lady whom I did not know. She was talking very quickly to her partner, and laughing, with her head on one side. Presently I went out. I took my rabbit from its cage in the garden and ran down into the ravine. When Olga came, I was lying on the ground in my lace dress, with the rabbit pressed against my cheek. At first I would not speak to her.

‘They tell lies in there,’ I said at last; ‘they don’t mean what they say.’ Then I began to cry loudly.

Olga laughed, and carried me upstairs to bed.

There came a time when Olga was always crying. She would lift me over into her bed early in the morning and, pulling my hair back, hold my head away from her on the pillow. Then she would look at me, and sigh and sigh. One afternoon mother took me to the circus. When we came back, I ran to tell Olga of the baby camel that I had seen. I could not find her. Her watchcase and the picture of her daughter were missing from the bureau. She never came back.

That evening mother gave me my supper. Afterwards a strange lady in a long black coat came to see us. Mother put my hand into hers. ‘This is your new governess, dear; you must call her Fräulein.’

‘Frālein,’ I repeated, staring at her, and drawing away my hand.

‘ I guess, Miss Schmidt, you had better put Marian to bed now.’

I turned and buried my face in mother’s gown, wailing loudly.

Fräulein had a black mole on one cheek. Generally two stiff hairs were growing out of its centre. When I kissed her good-night, they pricked my lips, so that I tried to walk up to her from the other side. It might make her feel badly to see me avoid them. She kept a little pair of tweezers in the back of her bureau drawer with which she used to pull the hairs out.

On Sunday afternoons, a young man came and called for her. Sometimes we met him in the park while we were walking. He always laughed a great deal. ‘How is the little Miss to-day?’ he would say, putting his hand on my shoulder. His handkerchief smelled of carnations. Before we reached home, Fräulein would make me promise not to tell mother that she had seen him.

One day they sat together on a bench and talked for a long time. I played by the pond with Jack, the little boy who lived next door. We pretended that the Spanish ships were coming. We were the Americans, and threw handfuls of mud into the water. A swan was passing, and some of my mud struck his white wing. When the battle was over I felt sorry for the swan because I had spoiled his clean feathers. Jack and I hunted a long time. We thought we could splash water at him and wash the mud off. But he had paddled away.

My feet were very wet when we came home from the pond. That night I had an ear-ache. I called mother because it was Fräulein’s evening out. Next morning Fräulein would not speak to me. She pushed me away when I tried to kiss her. ‘Go and tell your mother,’ she said, ‘that you were only pretending last night — your ear did not really ache. Then I will love you again.’ All day she paid no attention to me. At bedtime I went and told mother as she had bade. Then Fräulein smiled and talked again. But I had told a lie and was very unhappy. After she had gone, I cried myself to sleep.

When I think of that night, I always remember the swan that swam away with the mud on his wing.

Jack was younger than I. If we played soldier, I was the captain. If we played train, I was the engine. I was the queen when we played fairies. Almost always he did as I told him. When he refused, we fought, rolling over and over on the grass. He was smaller, so that I beat him easily. One day he said he would not be coal-car any longer. He told me I was only a girl. Then I struck him on the cheek. Suddenly I was lying flat on my back. — ‘Now get up,’ Jack ordered. ‘I am the engine.’ I looked at him for a moment. Then I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. He thought that I was dead and ran into the house screaming. When Fräulein came out, she jerked me to my feet and shook me. Jack was still crying. We played train again, and he let me be the engine.

After a while, Jack and I grew tired of playing engine and coal-car. He said that it was babyish. We decided to raise chickens. He took the tin crackerbox out of the pantry and I brought some candle-stubs. Jack’s cook gave us an egg. We wrapped it in cotton and put it in one end of the tin box. Then we put two of the candles at the other end. The next morning, the cotton was burned and the candles had gone out, but the egg felt heavier, so we kept lighted stubs in the box all day. At night the egg was very heavy. Jack said it must contain a rooster, but I wanted a hen because then we could get more eggs and hatch lots of chickens. We were afraid that it could n’t get out, so we broke the shell. The egg was cooked hard and there was no chicken.

Jack loved toads. He used to build little fences of matches and poke his captives with a switch until they jumped over them. One day, he tossed one high above his head and tried to catch it. The toad turned a summersault, and its four legs waved in the air until it resembled a huge spider. It fell to the ground and lay perfectly still on its back, with the two front paws folded. They looked like a baby’s hands. I began to cry and ran into the house. Pretty soon I heard Jack tiptoeing upstairs. He tried the knob, but my door was locked.

‘Marian,’ he called, ‘only see what I have brought !’

Then I twisted the key slowly. Jack came in with a pop-corn bag in his hand. He carried it carefully to the bureau, and tipped it upside down. The toad hopped out, and squatted among my cologne bottles, blinking, with its toes turned in.

Fräulein gave me lessons for two years, and after that I went to school. When I came home from my walk in the afternoon, I would run upstairs to a corner of the attic and read. I liked books with big words and long sentences. I read the New Testament, and after that the Talmud, parts of the Koran, and Blackstone’s Commentaries. I liked the latter best. I used to learn its sentences by heart and say them over and over at night before I went to sleep. Once we went on a Sunday-school picnic to a deserted farmhouse. I climbed in through the window and found a copy of Robinson’s Elementary Law. It was torn and yellow. I sat down on the floor behind the old wood-box. I did not hear them calling me outside. Finally one of the boys saw me through the window. I was walking up and down when they came in, repeating, ‘ Incorporeal real property embraces all those permanent rights which concern, or are annexed to, or are exercisable within, or result in the enjoyment of corporeal property.’

After a while I began to read novels too. I stole candle-ends from the pantry and hid them under my mattress. When Fräulein left me, I stuck them to the closet floor, where she could not see the light, and lay on my stomach with my face close to the book. Sometimes I acted out the characters. My favorite was a girl who kept a dance-hall in a western town. When her patrons grew familiar she boxed their ears. I used my long, brown school coat for the patrons.

When I read this story, we were living in a hotel. Fräulein used to let me sit downstairs for a while after supper, to listen to the music. A little boy with red hair always sat with me. One evening I asked him if my cheek was chapped. My face was very close to his. I waited breathlessly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘right there,’ and touched me gently. ‘How dare you!’ I screamed, and boxed his ear. ‘Keep your dirty hands off!’

Fräulein jerked me upstairs and washed my mouth out with soap.

Helen Ware sat behind me in school. She was a Catholic, and when she came to spend the night with me she always knelt, for a long time, at the foot of the bed, saying her prayers on a string of gold beads. Then we would talk together until almost morning.

One night I sat up suddenly.

‘Helen,’ I whispered, ‘who would you rather be, Effie or Cleopatra?’

Effie was the maid who helped us to take off our wraps at school. She was small and very white. Her hair was thin, and the rims of her eyes were pink. She always wore a brown woolen dress, with a little gold cross hanging round her neck on a worn brown ribbon. All morning she would sit by the hall window, stitching white linen altar-covers for the church.

By the dim light of the night lamp, I could see Helen’s round, surprised eyes, looking at me from the pillow.

‘Why, Effie, of course!’ she answered. ‘She is a good, pious girl. Cleopatra was a very bad woman.’

‘Well,’ I said, lying down again with a flounce, ‘I’d rather be Cleopatra.’

‘Marian!’ Helen gasped fearfully.

After this, there was a silence for several moments. Then she put both hands on my shoulders.

‘ Marian, dear, ’ she whispered, ‘ don’t talk that way, because you know you don’t mean it, and it sounds very wicked.’

‘No,’ I repeated stubbornly, ‘I would rather be Cleopatra.’

Helen crawled out of bed slowly, and began to say her beads again. I fell asleep before she had finished. But presently, she shook me gently and wakened me.

‘Marian,’ she said, ‘would you still rather be Cleopatra?’

‘Of course,’ I answered her.

I heard her sigh as she slipped back on the floor, and then I slept once more.

In about half an hour, she woke me again.

‘Helen,’ I said, solemnly this time, ‘ I would rather be Cleopatra, and have people love me, and fight great battles over me, and go to hell afterwards, than be Effie, and wear brown dresses, and sew for the church, and sit on a cloud playing a gold harp when I died!’

She began to cry, with soft, slow little sobs, so that I put my arms around her when she had wiggled back under the covers. We did not speak again, and presently she fell asleep, her breathing broken now and then by a little jerk.

I used to think that if I tiptoed to the door of father’s study, and jumped in suddenly, I might catch the bronze mask of Voltaire with his eyes open. I tried many times, but always I looked up again on the same smooth, gleaming surfaces of downcast lids. It hung on a dirty, red-plush panel over the organ. On the mantel stood a marble bust of Voltaire, and an etched portrait hung over the door. His works, and those of others about him, almost filled one of the bookcases which lined the room, reaching from floor to ceiling. I had my first lessons in French, learning to pronounce their names.

‘La Bible enfin expliquée,’ I would say, carefully pronouncing each syllable as it was spelled. Then father would laugh, and make me say the words again as he told me.

One afternoon, Miss Ellen came up to the study to talk to father. I sat on my little stool beside them, cutting out paper dolls. Miss Ellen was tired and gray. She lived across the river where the streets were always muddy and lined on either side with garbage-cans. The little children playing ‘seek and find’ used to crouch down in the bottom of them to hide. She and father were talking about a new kindergarten. Suddenly she bent down and laid her hand on my shoulder. Her voice sounded like crying, yet she laughed. ‘Oh, honey,’ she said, ‘when you grow up, if you go into settlement work, don’t get lean and eager as I am.’

The words made me wonder, but the tones were like warm, soft arms which held me close.

Father got up, and walked to the window. ’I can understand your studying and reading, Ellen, but why in the name of reason must you go over and live in that place?’ He spoke quickly and his eyes were very bright as he waved his arm about the book-lined room. ‘ Is n’t your love for all of these big enough to fill your life?’

Miss Ellen closed her eyes slowly, and smiled, and shook her head. Before she went away that afternoon, she asked father to play. We sat together on the green plush sofa, listening, and she held my hand. Father had on his felt slippers and an old corduroy smokingjacket. It was frayed at the cuffs, and one pocket was torn. Mother had given it to him years before.

While he played, he swayed back and forth. He never watched the keys, but fixed his eyes, which were very wide and blue, on the mask of Voltaire above the organ. He played continuously, running one theme into another. Sometimes it was his own music, and he would hesitate for a moment, searching for the proper harmony, and striking the notes softly and tentatively. Then, when the right one was found, he would smile gently, and nod his head. ‘So,’ he would whisper to himself. Sometimes, if the strain pleased him particularly, he repeated it several times, insistently.

Afterwards I could never hum the things which father played. They made me think of colors. Sometimes the notes were soft, dull colors, shading one into another. Then again they were brilliant, and sharply divided, like patches in a crazy quilt. They made pictures. But when I asked him what the pictures were, he would laugh and shake his head. He could not speak them.

To-day the music was gay.

‘ See now, I will play away your hungry babies and sad-eyed women,’ he said to Miss Ellen.

I knew not how or why, but suddenly hot tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I buried my face in Miss Ellen’s lap. Her fingers stroked my hair as she bent over me. ‘You are like him,’ she whispered, ‘very like him, — but, darling, through your whole life remember this — it means responsibility.’

Across the years that have gone, those notes come back — dancing, rollicking still, to fall on the heart’s ear in the plaintive minor of that afternoon. Again they bring tears, and again I hear Miss Ellen’s whisper, but I know now why I cry.

II

I called aloud in the forest, and the shout came back. Then I searched long, to find who answered me — but the sound had no source. I followed the will-o’-the-wisp through swamps at evening. It led me hither and yon, but I came nowhere. It was only the ghost of a light. I saw an apple hanging in the depths of a pool. I stooped to pick it, and laved my hands in the water. The apple had no form. This is dreamlife.

First there was Margaret. She wore hoopskirts, curls, and a cameo brooch. Her face was like Miss Agatha’s, and she had a voice that seemed to cuddle you, like Miss Ellen’s. Fräulein always put a chair for her at the foot of the table during my supper-time. I used to knock when I went into the dressing-room before breakfast, because Margaret was getting dressed there. At night she would sit beside my bed, while I told her of everything that I had done during the day. Sometimes she would stroke my hair and laugh, and sometimes she became very angry.

Once, on Fräulein’s day out, Jack and I took five cents out of mother’s purse. There were five more in his pocket. We went around the corner to the drug-store for a soda. It was the first time we had ever had one. When the man asked us what flavor we wanted, I looked anxiously at Jack, who kicked his toe against the counter, and took the other nickel from his pocket. Then he smiled suddenly, holding it out to the man. ‘We’ll take the best you ’ve got,’ he said. The man laughed, and gave us chocolate, with two big spoonfuls of ice cream.

That night I told Margaret. The following afternoon I was going to a birthday party. She said I must stay home in bed. For a long time I begged her to forgive me, but she only shook her head. Then I became very angry, and stamped my foot. ‘You’re nothing but a pretend!’ I said to her. ‘ Go to the party,’ she answered quietly, ‘ but I shall leave you, and never come back.’

The next day, I watched Fräulein lay out my lace dress and pink sash. Then she came over and started to unfasten the rags in my hair. I turned away abruptly. ‘I’m not going.’

‘Hm,’ she replied, ‘take care, or I’ll not curl your hair, and you will really have to stay at home.’

‘I’m going to, anyway,’ I said.

Fräulein stared at me. ‘Well, where do you expect to go?’ she scoffed.

’To bed,’ I answered shortly.

When at last she had dressed me in my nightgown, with my hair braided, and had gone away muttering to herself, I crawled under the covers, and hid my tears in the pillow. ‘There was a Punch-and-Judy show, and a grabbag, and —’

Then Margaret came to sit beside me. I buried my head under the sheet, but at last I turned over and took her hand, and, holding it, fell asleep.

In a cabinet near father’s organ stood a small squat bottle of stones. A missionary had brought them from the Jordan. Once, when father was away, I took one out. It was clear and purple, with a smooth surface, across which straggled a faint blue vein. I held it in the palm of my hand, while shivers of awe ran up and down my back. Perhaps Jesus had trod upon it as he waded out into the river! It would have wonderful powers to heal sickness and work miracles, like the bones or pieces of wood we read about in books.

When I went upstairs I took the stone with me. All afternoon I sewed tiny bags to carry it, on a chain around my neck. I made a pink satin one from a bit of ribbon that mother had given me; another of white leather from an old kid glove; and a third of chamois, with blue cross-stitching, for rainy days. While I sewed, I decided that I must have precious ointment or lotion in which to wash it every evening. I could think of nothing worthy, until I pricked my finger and a tiny spot of blood appeared. Then I sprang up, and ran downstairs to ask the cook for a knife. I had had a sign from heaven.

When I came up again, I closed the door carefully. Then I shut my eyes, and pressed the blade down on my finger. It was very dull. I tried once more, sawing it slowly back and forth. My knees trembled, and there was a little beaded rim of perspiration above my upper lip. At last the knife went through the skin. A drop of blood spurted out, and trickled along my finger, to drip from its tip into the clean, empty medicine bottle which I had ready. I squeezed the cut until the whole glass bottom was covered with blood. Then I filled the bottle half full of water.

Every evening I washed my stone in the pale brown lotion. At school, we thought of it as something very wonderful. When the girls took it from the little pink bag they always held it fearfully in the centre of their palms. I let Eleanor, my best friend, wear it during spelling class, but I kept it for geography and Latin.

One summer, at the seashore, Jack and I pretended we were knights. He was Launcelot, and I was Galahad. Mother gave us each a tin helmet and breastplate, and father made us oak swords with leather guards. We decided to keep watch over our armor all night. After Fräulein had turned down the lights, I climbed out of bed and propped my sword against the wall, with the other arms beside it. Then I knelt before them. The clock ticked on and on, and finally cuckooed nine times. Outside, beyond the hotel porch, the waves rolled back and forth along the shore. The shade flapped against the window, and in the hall I could hear Fräulein conning French verbs. My knees became very stiff, and I swayed slightly. Then everything grew suddenly still. When I woke up, the light over the transom had gone, and it was very quiet, save for the clock and the waves. I lay on the floor, with my arms around the helmet. Picking it up, I clambered drowsily into bed, and tucked the covers about the smooth, cold tin.

One day, on the beach, another little girl asked to play with us. She said she would be Sir Percival. ‘ Then you must be honorable and fearless,’ we told her.

Presently she jumped out to a rock, about which the waves swept in shallow, gray currents.

‘I vow by the Holy Grail that I shall stay here for three minutes,’ she called.

I held my breath while Jack took out his little silver watch.

‘One minute gone —’ he said at last.

Then a big wave came, and splashed upon the rock. Sir Percival turned and sprang for the shore. Jack and I looked at each other, wide-eyed with dismay. I think we expected her to be struck by lightning. She stood there smiling sheepishly, but nothing happened. Then we picked up our swords and walked away. We never spoke to her again.

One afternoon we were having a tournament in the casino. Jack’s sword slipped and struck Billy Fargo on the head. Billy sat in the middle of the ballroom floor, with his face turned away from us. There was a splash of blood on his sleeve. We did not dare speak to him or touch him, for fear that he would cry. Knights never cried. Presently somebody looked in at the casino door. We forgot all about Billy, and stared at the newcomer. It was the great actor from New York, who had ridden down to spend the day with my uncle. He still wore khaki riding breeches and an English army coat. His hair was heavy and black, and he had dark gray eyes. There was a twinkle in them just now, and his lips wore a little twisted smile as he came over to Billy. We parted silently to each side, still staring. Then he bent down, gathered Billy into his arms, to fling him over his shoulder like a mealbag, and strode out of the door. From the window we watched him go down the terrace to the bay, and aboard my uncle’s sail-boat. Faintly there reached us from across the gardens the jerky squeaking of the pulley, as he and Billy lifted the mainsail.

After that, I thought of what had happened in the casino many times. I called him Jim — I did not know why.

One night I was lying in bed making up pictures. There was a log shack on the edge of a muddy, straggling river. Beyond were low sand-hills, purple and yellow in the sunset. I knew this, because I had seen it all from a train window two years before. A grindstone stood beside the stoop, with a tin washbasin hańging on the nail above it. There was a bench against the house wall, made of a split log. A man in khahi riding breeches was sitting there. He was whittling, and the shavings lay scattered about his feet. He had heavy black hair and gray eyes. Men in my pictures always looked like Jim now. Before him was a boy. Suddenly I jumped out of bed, and stood shivering in my nightgown in the middle of the room, turning an imaginary hat round and round in my hands.

‘Please, boss,’ I said, ‘I want a job.’

Jim looked up slowly. ‘ Who are you?’ he asked.

I told him ‘Karpeles.’

Then he smiled his queer little twisted smile. ‘That’s quite a name for a small boy.’

I tried hard not to jump up and down in my excitement. He really thought that I was a boy.

‘ It was my grandfather’s name,’ I muttered, apologetically.

‘Well, Karpeles,’ Jim asked, ‘what can you do?’

There was silence for a moment, then, ‘Please, please take me, boss,’ I begged, still twisting the hat; ‘I’ll be Martha and Mary too.’

And so I went to live with Jim, and dream-life became very full.

When we came back to the city, I told Jack about the boss. He said he wanted to work for him too. We pretended that Grandmother Crosby’s stable was the barn and outbuildings of the ranch. There was a trap-door in the floor which led to the potato cellar. We fastened a rope to an iron ring above, and lowered it into the hole. Then, through the long fall afternoons, we climbed up and down, up and down, bearing imaginary bags on our shoulders. We were loading the wagons to go into Maverick with the season’s sugar-beet crop. When finally the cellar was emptied, we ran back and forth in the yard, lashing the air with long black whips. Here was the corral. We were breaking in Jim’s ponies.

The shack had only one room. There was a big fireplace at the end, with shelves on either side. On the floor were bearand deer-skins. In the centre stood a crooked table. A double bed with log posts was in the corner against the wall. It was covered with red woolen blankets and a buffalo skin. Jim and I slept here. When the nights were very cold, I used to double the comforter and put it all on one side of the bed. I took my school coat from the closet, and laid it over myself. It made Fräulein very angry when she came in next morning. She told me that they locked crazy people in iron cells.

One night there was a blizzard. Jim did not come home. After Fräulein had gone out, I put a candle-stub in the window. The clock cuckooed eleven and then twelve. Still he had not come. At last I heard his horse in the snow outside. He was very cold. All night he tossed back and forth muttering. I sat in an arm-chair beside the bed. When Fräulein came at seven to close the windows, I had fallen asleep. She jerked me by the shoulders and shook me. I crawled into bed without speaking to her, and put my arms around Jim. He was much better, and said he would not die. Then I laughed. ‘He’s all right now,’ I told Fräulein. ’I don’t care what you do to me.’

She turned away. ‘Disgusting, indecent child! ’ she said.

But I was very happy then, and the words held no wonder.

One Saturday, Eleanor and her twin sister Lucy came for luncheon. Afterwards we sat upstairs in my playroom and made bags for the purple stone. The twins were fourteen and I was only thirteen, so that I felt very proud that Eleanor was my best friend.

We had been sewing quietly for several minutes. Presently Lucy turned to her sister. ‘Is n’t it nice that Mrs. Fargo is going to have a baby?’ she said.

Eleanor scowled and raised her eyes suddenly. They met mine, and she dropped them again to her work. She did not answer.

Lucy went on with her sewing; she took careful, prim little stitches. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Eleanor,’ she remarked.

My piece of satin lay in my lap. ‘Lucy,’ I said, after a while, and it seemed as if I were listening to somebody else speak. ‘Why do you think that the stork is going to bring Mrs. Fargo a new baby?’

Lucy smiled. ‘Really, you do not believe that silly stuff any longer?’

‘Shut up, Lucy,’ said Eleanor suddenly.

Her sister shrugged her shoulders. Then she looked at me deliberately.

‘ I know that Mrs. Fargo is going to have a baby,’ she said, ‘because she has let out all of her dresses. She only wears loose ones now.’

The cuckoo clock ticked comfortably on. Beneath, in the street, a hurdy-gurdy suddenly began its pulsating, metallic jargon. The lame houseman was thumping unrhythmically up the back stairs. Finally I folded my sewing slowly, and put it in the drawer. Leaning over Lucy’s chair, I slipped my arms about her neck, and laid my cheek against hers.

‘I want you to tell me everything now,’ I begged.

There was a long silence. Eleanor did not look up again.

‘All right,’ said Lucy at last, and I sat down before her.

‘Well,’ she began, and then stopped. Her face was very pink, and she turned away her head. ‘I cannot talk if you stare at me so,’ she said crossly.

After that, I kept, my eyes fixed on a figure in the carpet, and she went on, monotonously, with many pauses.

That night seemed very long. Once I screamed, and sobbed Jim’s name. Fräulein came running in. She switched on the light, and stood blinking, in her pink flannel nightgown.

‘I had a bad dream,’ I told her, and hid my face in the pillow.

She came over and tucked my covers tighter. ‘I will leave your door open,’ she said, and patted me roughly on the shoulder. ‘Now close your eyes like a good girl, and go to sleep.’

When she left, the room seemed emptier than ever. At last I got up, and tiptoed down stairs to the guestroom. There were two beds there.

I curled up on the lace counterpane and fell asleep. When I woke up, the sun was shining. My head was on the other pillow, and my arms were stretched out across the other bed.

(To be continued.)