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 man-servant opened the door and looked at us as if weary and surprised, and said nothing.
"Is Mrs. Reagan in?" I asked.
"She is."