on when Yorkburg was first begun, nobody
has ever thought of putting them in. Mr. Loyall, he's the mayor, says
everybody has gotten on very well for over two hundred years without
them, and he don't see any use in stirring up the subject. So there'll
never be any change until he's dead, and in Yorkburg nobody dies till
the last thing.

There wouldn't be any electric lights if the shoe factory hadn't come
here. The men who brought it came from New Jersey, and they wanted
light, and got it. And Yorkburg was so pleased that it moved a little
and made some light for itself; and now everything in town just blazes,
even the Asylum.

I used to sleep in No. 4, but I don't sleep there now. It is a big room,
and has six windows in it, and in winter we children used to play we
were arctic explorers and would search for icebergs. The North Pole was
the Reagan's house, half-way down the street, and it might as well have
been, for it was as much beyond our reach.

But it was the one thing we were all going to get some day when we
married rich. And when we got it, we were going to drive up to the Galt
House--that's the Home for Poor and Proud Ladies--and ask for Mrs.
Reagan, who was to be in it in the third floor back, and leave her some
old clothes with the buttons off, and old magazines. None of us could
bear Mrs. Reagan--not a single one.

It is a beautiful house, Mrs. Reagan's is. It has large white pillars
in the front and back, and it's got three bath-rooms, and a big tank in
the back yard. And it has velvet curtains over the lace ones, and gold
furniture and pictures with gold frames a foot wide.

I heard Miss Katherine talking about it to Miss Webb one night. They
were laughing about something Miss Katherine said was the most
impossible of all, and Miss Webb said it was desecrating for such a
stately old house to fall into the hands of such bulgarians. What are
bulgarians? I don't know. But they're not ladies.

Mrs. Reagan is not a lady. The way I found it out was this. Miss Jones,
she's our housekeeper, sent a message to her one day by Bertha Reed and
me about some pickles. Bertha is awful timid, and she didn't know
whether or not we ought to go to the front door; but I did, and I told
her to come on.

"I don't go to back doors, if I don't know my family history," I said.
"I know who I am, and something inside of me tells me where to go." And
I pressed the button so hard I thought I'd broken it unintentional.

The m