, and in all my
life I'd never be anything else. And I'd almost sweep the bricks up out
of the yard, I'd be so mad to think I was nothing and nobody.

I wanted to be something and somebody. I didn't want to die and be
forgotten. I would have liked to sit on St. John's Church steeple and
have everybody look at me and say:

"That's Mary Cary! She's great and rich, and gives away lots of money
and sings like an angel." That's what I once would have liked, but I've
learned a few things since I didn't know then.

One is that high places are lonely and hard and uncomfortable, and
people who have sat on them have sometimes wished they didn't. Miss
Katherine told me that herself, also that the place you're in is pretty
near what you're fitted to fill. Otherwise you'd get out and fill
another.

I've given up steeples and superiorities. But I'm glad I'm not going to
be an orphan, just an orphan, all my life. I'm glad; still, when I think
of going away and leaving everybody and everything: the old pump, where
I drowned my first little chicken washing it; and the old mulberry-tree,
where my first doll was buried; and the garret, where I made up
ghost-stories for the girls on rainy days; and the school-room; and even
No. 4--when I think of these things, I could be like that man in the
Bible (I believe it was David, but it might have been Jonah), I could
lift up my voice and weep.

But I'm not going to. Weepers are a nuisance.

I guess that's the way with life, though. When things are going, you
try to hold them back. And if you got them, you'd maybe wish you hadn't.

That's the way Mrs. Gaines did when her husband died. I mean when he
didn't die that first time. She thought he was going to, and so did
everybody else. He had Fright's disease, and it affected his heart,
being liable to take him off any time, and Mrs. Gaines just carried on
terrible.

She had faintings and hysterics, and said she couldn't live without him,
though everybody in Yorkburg knew she could, and easy enough. He without
her, too, had she gone first. She had asthma and an outbreaking temper,
and he drank.

Mrs. Mosby--she's the doctor's wife--said she didn't blame him. No man
could stand Mrs. Gaines all the time without something to help, and
everybody hoped when he got so ill that he'd die and have a little rest.
But he didn't. He got better.

Mrs. Gaines was so surprised she was downright disagreeable about it,
and how he stood it was a wonder. He