ng to
find out what couldn't be found out, specially about why God lets
Mothers die.

Mary is my Sunday self who wonders and wonders at everything and asks a
million questions inside, and goes along and lets people think she is
truly Martha when she knows all the time she isn't. And if I do hold out
and write a history of my life, it's going to be a Martha and Mary
history; for some days I'm one, some another, and whichever I happen to
be is plain to be seen.

When I grow up I am going to marry a million-dollar man, so I can travel
around the world and have a house in Paris with twenty bath-rooms in
it. And I'm going to have horses and automobiles and a private car and
balloons, if they are working all right by that time. I hope they will
be, for I want something in which I can soar up and sit and look down on
other people.

All my life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was a
Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary with
fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white
calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats
with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing
fingers when it's cold, and no ice-water when it's hot.

Yes, dear Mary, you and I are going to marry a rich man. (Martha is
writing to-day.) I will try to love him, but if I can't I will be polite
to him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be rich
some day. I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, for
the clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they're going to
be so grand. Miss Katherine would be ashamed of that and make me
ashamed, but this writing is for the relief of feelings.

But there's one thing I'm surer of than I am of being rich, and that is
that there are to be no secrets about my children's mother. They are to
know all about me I can tell, which won't be much or distinguished, but
what there is they're to know. And that's the chief reason I'm going to
write my history, so as to remember in case I forget.

Well, now I will begin. I am eleven years and eleven months and three
days old. I don't have birthday parties. The Yorkburg Female Orphan
Asylum is a large house with a wide hall in the middle, and a wing on
one side that makes it look like Major Green, who lost one arm in the
war.

There are large grounds around the house, and around the grounds is a
high brick wall in front and