rtha for a week, and then I saw, real sudden,
how silly I was to let a bulgarian make me mad.

But if I'm ever expected to love anything like that, it will be
expecting too much of Mary Cary, mostly Martha, for she isn't an enemy.
She's just a make-believe of something she wasn't born into being and
don't know how to make herself. She don't agree with my nature, and if I
had a parlor she couldn't come into it either. She could not.

IV

THE STEPPED-ON AND THE STEPPERS

I don't believe I ever have written anything about my first years at
this Asylum. I am naturally a wandering person. Well, I was happy. I
know I've said that before, but Miss Katherine says that's one of the
few things you can say often.

I had a kitten, and a chicken which I killed by mistake. I took it to
the pump to wash it, and it lost its breath and died. I still put
flowers on the place where its grave was.

It was my first to die. I have lost many others since: a cat, and a
rabbit, and a rooster called Napoleon because he was so strutty and
domineering to his wives. I didn't put up anything to his grave. I
didn't think the hens would like it. They just despised him.

Then there were the remains of Rebecca Baker. She was of rags, with
button eyes and no teeth, just marks for them; but I loved her very
much. I kept her as long as there was anything to hold her by; but after
legs and arms went, and the back of her head got so thin from lack of
sawdust that she had neuralgia all the time, I found her dead one
morning, and buried her at once.

I loved Rebecca Baker: not for looks, but for comfort. I could talk to
her without fear of her telling. She always knew how hungry I was, and
how I hated oatmeal without sugar, and she never talked back.

During the years from three to nine I lived just mechanical, except on
the inside. I got up to a bell and cleaned to a bell, and sat down to
eat to a bell; rose to a bell, went to school to a bell, came out to a
bell, worked to a bell, sewed to a bell, played to a bell, said my
prayers to a bell, got in bed to a bell, and the next day and every day
did the same thing over to the same old bell.

But when I marry my children's father there are to be no bells in the
house we live in. Only buttons, with no particular time to be pressed.

We go to church to a bell, too; that, is to Sunday-school. We always go
to St. John's Sunday-school--Episcopal. The man who left this place put
it in his will th