Mary Cary: "Frequently Martha"

by Kate Langley Bosher

But sleep? There wasn't a blink of it for me all night. I was so mixed up with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach, and my old conscience got so sanctimonious that if I could have spanked it I would.

I wasn't eavesdropping; I know that's nasty. But forty times I'd been punished for speaking when I shouldn't, and, besides, it was my duty to find myself. They saw me, and then forgot. If they hadn't wanted me to know what they were saying, they shouldn't have said it.

But that didn't do my conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It's always making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I will say anything to my children about one, and let them have some peace.

For two days I didn't have any. Then I decided I'd wait until Miss Katherine came, and not say anything to her or to anybody about what I'd heard until I found out a little more about that remembrance in her face. But the waiting for her is the longest wait I've ever waited through yet.

It certainly is queer what a surprise you are to yourself. Before I knew that my mother and her father and his father and some other fathers behind him had lived in the Alden House, I would have given all I own, which isn't much, just my body, to have known it. And I guess I would have been that airy Martha couldn't have lived with me, and would have had to take Mary to the pump to bring her senses back with water. Mary is my best part, but at times she hasn't half the common sense she needs, and frequently has a pride Martha has to attend to.

But after I found out I had the same kind of blood in me that Mrs. General Rodman had in her, though I'm thankful it isn't mentioned on the family's tombstones, it didn't seem half as big a thing as I thought.

I was ashamed of the way it had acted, and of the way it had treated my father. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about his, whether high or low, and I know nothing about him. But I adore his memory! I am his child as well as Mary Alden's, and that's a thing my children are never going to forget. Never.

And now the part I'm thinking of most is what was said about Miss Katherine and Dr. Parke Alden being sweethearts when they were young. He has been away thirteen years, Mrs. Moon said, and Miss Katherine is now twenty-eight. I know she is, because she told me so.

Thirteen from twenty-eight leaves fifteen, so she was fifteen when they had that fuss and he went off. Fifteen was awful young to love hard and permanent; but Miss Webb says Miss Katherine was born grown and stubborn, and when she once takes a stand she keeps it.

I wonder what she took the stand with Uncle Parke for? She is right quick and outspoken at times, and I bet he made her mad about something.