I.
That year when Christmas came Papa gave her a red book with a gold holly wreath on the cover. The wreath was made out of three words: The Children's Prize, printed in letters that pretended to be holly sprigs. Inside the holly wreath was the number of the year, in fat gold letters: 1869.
Soon after Christmas she had another birthday. She was six years old. She could write in capitals and count up to a hundred if she were left to do it by herself. Besides "Gentle Jesus," she could say "Cock-Robin" and "The House that Jack Built," and "The Lord is my Shepherd" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp." And she could read all her own story books, picking out the words she knew and making up the rest. Roddy never made up. He was a big boy, he was eight years old.
The morning after her birthday Roddy and she were sent into the drawing-room to Mamma. A strange lady was there. She had chosen the high-backed chair in the middle of the room with the Berlin wool-work parrot on it. She sat very upright, stiff and thin between the twisted rosewood pillars of the chair. She was dressed in a black gown made of a great many little bands of rough crape and a few smooth stretches of merino. Her crape veil, folded back over her hat, hung behind her head in a stiff square. A jet necklace lay flat and heavy on her small chest. When you had seen all these black things she showed you, suddenly, her white, wounded face.
Mamma called her Miss Thompson.
Miss Thompson's face was so light and thin that you thought it would break if you squeezed it. The skin was drawn tight over her jaw and the bridge of her nose and the sharp naked arches of her eye-bones. She looked at you with mournful, startled eyes that were too large for their lids; and her flat chin trembled slightly as she talked.
"This is Rodney," she said, as if she were repeating a lesson after
Mamma.
Rodney leaned up against Mamma and looked proud and handsome. She had her arm round him, and every now and then she pressed it tighter to draw him to herself.
Miss Thompson said after Mamma, "And this is Mary."
Her mournful eyes moved and sparkled as if she had suddenly thought of something for herself.
"I am sure," she said, "they will be very good."
Mamma shook her head, as much as to say Miss Thompson must not build on it.
Every weekday from ten to twelve Miss Thompson came and taught them reading, writing and arithmetic. Every Wednesday at half-past eleven the boys' tutor, Mr. Sippett, looked in and taught Rodney "Mensa: a table."
Mamma told them they must never be naughty with Miss Thompson because her mother was dead.
They went away and talked about her among the gooseberry bushes at the bottom of the garden.
"I don't know how we're going to manage," Rodney said. "There's no sense in saying we mustn't be naughty because her mother's dead."
"I suppose," Mary said, "it would make her think she's deader."
"We can't help that. We've got to be naughty some time."
"We mustn't begin," Mary said. "If we begin we shall have to finish."
They were good for four days, from ten to twelve. And at a quarter past twelve on the fifth day Mamma found Mary crying in the dining-room.
"Oh, Mary, have you been naughty?"
"No; but I shall be to-morrow. I've been so good that I can't keep on any longer."
Mamma took her in her lap. She lowered her head to you, holding it straight and still, ready to pounce if you said the wrong thing.
"Being good when it pleases you isn't being good," she said. "It's not what Jesus means by being good. God wants us to be good all the time, like Jesus."
"But—Jesus and me is different. He wasn't able to be naughty. And I'm not able to be good. Not all the time."
"You're not able to be good of your own will and in your own strength.
You're not good till God makes you good."
"Did God make me naughty?"
"No. God couldn't make anybody naughty."
"Not if he tried hard?"
"No. But," said Mamma, speaking very fast, "he'll make you good if you ask him."
"Will he make me good if I don't ask him?"
"No," said Mamma.