THE COMING OF MISS KATHERINE
ow, why can't I keep on at a thing like Miss Katherine? Why? Because I'm just Mary Cary, mostly Martha; made of nothing, came from nowhere, and don't know where I'm going, and have no more system in my nature than Miss Bray has charms for gentlemen.
But Miss Katherine—well, there never was and never will be but one Miss Katherine, and there's as much chance of my being like her as there is of my reaching the stars. I'll never be like her, but she's my friend. That's the wonderful part of it. She's my friend. And when you've got a friend like Miss Katherine you've got strength to do anything. To stand anything, too.
The beautiful part of it is that I live with her; that is, she lives in the Asylum, and I sleep in the room with her.
It happened this way. Last summer I didn't want to do anything but sit down. It was the funniest thing, for before that I never did like to sit down if I could stand up, or skip around, or climb, or run, or dance, or jump. I never could walk straight or slow, and I never can keep step.
Well, last summer I didn't want to move, and I couldn't eat, and I didn't even feel like reading. I'd have such queer slipping-away feelings right in my heart that I'd call myself a drop of ink on a blotter that was spreading and spreading and couldn't stop. Sometimes I would think I was sinking down and down, but I really wasn't sinking, for I didn't move. I only felt like I was, and I was afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I would die, and I stayed awake so as to know about it if I did.
And then I began to be afraid of dying, and my heart would beat so I thought it would wear out. But I didn't tell anybody how I felt. I was ashamed of being afraid, and I just told God, because I knew He could understand better than anybody else; and I asked Him please to hold on to me, I not being able to do much holding myself, and He held. I know it, for I felt it.
You see, Mrs. Blamire—she's Miss Bray's assistant—was away; Miss Bray was busy getting ready to go when Mrs. Blamire came back; and Miss Jones was pickling and preserving. I didn't want to bother her, so I dragged on, and kept my feelings to myself.
The girls were awful good to me. Real many have relations in Yorkburg, and if I'd eaten all the fruit they sent me I'd been a tutti-frutti; but I couldn't eat it. And then one day I began to talk so queer they were frightened, and told Miss Bray, and she sent for the doctor quick. That afternoon they took me to the hospital, and the last thing I saw was little Josie White crying like her heart would break with her arms around a tree.