as the leaves, and trying to make believe she was. I was full
of the things the Bible says went into swine, and I knew there would be
trouble for me before the day was out. But there wasn't. Not even for
breaking the pump-handle was I punished, and Miss Bray tried so hard to
be friendly that at first I did not understand. I do now.

That was my first experience in finding out that some one who looked
like a lady on the outside was mean and deceitful on the inside, and it
made me tremble all over to find it could be so. Since then I have never
pretended to be friends with Miss Bray. As for her, she hates me--hates
me because she knows I know what sort of a person she is, a sort I
loathe from my heart.

When I first got my diary I thought I was going to write in it every
day. I haven't, and that shows I'm no better on resolves than I am on
keeping step. I never keep step. Sometimes I've thought I was really
something, but I'm not. 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.
Minerva James says they are like veterans--they die and yet forever
live.

Well, anyhow, whenever I used to do wrong, which was pretty constant, I
would say to myself it didn't matter, nobody cared. 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. I thought once I'd
take up Botany in particular, as I love flowers; or Astronomy, so as to
find out all about those million worlds in the sky, so superior to