I could smell them. I really could.

Miss Katherine brought her own furniture and things, and she put a
carpet on the floor, all over, not just strips. And the windows had
muslin curtains at them with cretonne curtains just full of pink roses,
looped back from the muslin ones; and the couch and the cushions and
some chairs were all covered with the same kind of pink roses. And as
for the bed, it was too sweet for anybody to lie on--that is, for
anybody but Miss Katherine to lie on.

There was a big closet for her clothes, and a writing-desk which had
been in the family a hundred years--maybe a thousand. I don't know. And
one side of the room was filled with books in shelves which old Peter
Sands made and painted white for her. She lets me look at them as much
as I want, and says I can read as many as I choose when I am old enough
to understand them. She didn't mention any time to begin trying to
understand, and so I started at once, and I've read about forty already.

There aren't a great many pictures on Miss Katherine's walls. Just a few
besides the portraits of her father and mother, oil paintings. And oh,
dear children what are to be, I'm going to have my picture painted as
soon as I marry your father, so you can know what I looked like in case
I should die without warning. I want you to have it, knowing so well
what it means to have nothing that belonged to your mother, I not having
anything--not even a strand of hair or a message.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really did have a Mother, or if the doctor
just left me somewhere and nobody wanted me. I must have had one, for
Betty Johnson says a baby's bound to. That a father isn't so specially
necessary, but you've got to have a Mother. Mine died when I was born. I
wonder how that happened when there wasn't anybody in all this great big
earth to take care of me except my father, who didn't know how. He died,
too, and then I was an Orphan.

This is a strange world, and it's better not to try to understand
things.

In the winter time Miss Katherine always has a beautiful crackling fire
in her room, and some growing flowers and green things. It was a
revelation to the girls, her room was. Not fine, and it didn't cost
much, but you felt nicer and kinder the minute you went in it. And it
made Mrs. Reagan's grand parlors seem like shining brass and tinkling
cymbals. I wonder why?

III

MARY, FREQUENTLY MARTHA

I am going to write a history of my life. T