Part 4 (1/2)

But the Baptist minister don't let you sleep on his Sunday. He used to try to make the girls come up and profess, but now he don't ask even that. Just sit where you are and hold up your hand, and when you join the church--any church will answer--you are saved. I don't understand it.

We all like the Methodist minister. I don't think he knows many dead languages. He don't have much time to study, being so busy helping people; but he knows how to talk to us children, and he always makes me wish I wasn't so bad. He always does, and the Mary part of me just rises right up on his Sunday, and Martha is ashamed of herself. He believes in getting better by the love way. So do I.

Miss Katherine is going away next week to stay two months. Going to her army brother's first, and then to the California brother, who's North somewhere. And from the time she told me I've felt like Robinson Crusoe's daughter would have felt, if he'd had one, and gone off and left her on that desert island.

I don't know what we're going to do when she goes away. I could shed gallons of tears, only I don't like tears, and then, too, she might see me. I want her to think I'm glad she's going, for she needs a change.

But, oh, the difference her going will make!

I will be nothing but Martha. I know it. Nothing but Martha until she comes back. The Mary part of me is so sick at the thought she hasn't any backbone, and Martha is showing signs already.

And that shows I'm just nothing, for Miss Katherine has taught us, without exactly telling, how we can't do what we ought by wanting. We've got to work. In plain words, its watch and pray, and with me it's the watching that's most important. If I'm not on the lookout, and don't nab Martha right away, praying don't have any effect. I'm a natural pray-er, but on watching I'm poor.

I couldn't make any one understand what Miss Katherine has done for us since she's been here. Some words don't tell things. The nursing when we're sick is only a part, and though she's fixed up one of the rooms just like a hospital-room, with everything so white and clean and sweet in it that it's real joy to be sick, we're not sick often.

It's the keeping us well that's kept her so busy. She's explained so many things to us we didn't know before, she's almost made me like my body. I didn't use to. Not a bit.

It's such a nuisance, and needs so much attention to keep it going right. So often it was freezing cold, or blazing hot, or hungry, and had to be dressed in such ugly clothes that I was ashamed of it. And if ever I could have hung it up in the closet or put it away in a bureau-drawer, I would have done it while I went out and had a good time. But I couldn't do it. I had to take it everywhere I went, and until Miss Katherine came I had mighty little use for it.

But since she's been here the girls are much cleaner, and we don't mind so much not having the things to eat that we like. That is, not quite so much. But almost. When you're downright hungry for the taste of things, it don't satisfy to say to yourself ”You don't really need it. Be quiet.” And being made of flesh and blood, most of us would rather eat the things we want to than the things we ought to.

But the dining-room is much nicer. We have flowers on the table, and the cooking is better, though we still have prunes.

I loathe prunes.

V

”HERE COMES THE BRIDE!”

I knew when Miss Katherine left I'd be nothing but Martha. That's what I've been--Martha.

She hadn't been gone two days when Mary gave up, and as prompt as possible Martha invented trouble.

It was this way. In the summer we have much more time than in the winter, and the children kept coming to me asking me to make up something, and all of a sudden a play came in my mind. I just love acting. The play was to be the marriage of Dr. Rudd and Miss Bray.

You see, Miss Bray is dead in love with Dr. Rudd--really addled about him. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick she is so solicitous and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed to me if we could just think him into marrying her, it would be the best work we'd ever done, and I thought it was worth trying.

They say if you just think and think and think about a thing you can make somebody else think about it, too. And not liking Dr. Rudd, we didn't mind thinking her on him, and so we began. Every day we'd meet for an hour and think together, and each one promised to think single, and in between times we got ready.

Becky Drake says love goes hard late in life, and sometimes touches the brain. Maybe that accounts for Miss Bray.

She is fifty-three years old, and all frazzled out and done up with adjuncts. But Dr. Rudd, being a man with not even usual sense, and awful conceited, don't see what we see, and swallows easy. Men are funny--funny as some women.

I don't think he's ever thought of courting Miss Bray. But she's thought of it, and for once we truly tried to help her.

Well, we got ready, beginning two days after Miss Katherine left, and the play came off Friday night, the third of July. In consequence of that play I have been in a retreat, and on the Fourth of July I made a New-Year resolution.

I resolved I would do those things I should not do, and leave undone the things I should. I would not disappoint Miss Bray. She looked for things in me to worry her. She should find them.