Miss Gibbie Gault

by Kate Langley Bosher

She crumpled the paper and threw it at the girl standing in front of her. "There," she said, "there's the list of your Yorkburg Fathers. I hope Hedwig will fumigate you when you get home to-night."

"She will if necessary." The crumpled paper was smoothed and folded carefully. "But I don't believe it will be. I've taken tea with most of their families."

"You've taken /what?/" Miss Gibbie bounced half-way out of her chair.

"Tea." Mary Cary's head nodded affirmatively. "That's what I said, tea—I mean supper. I invited myself to some of the places, but some of the people invited me themselves. I'm afraid I did hint a little. But we had a good time, and I've got my little piece of paper—see!"

She held a note-book toward Miss Gibbie, but the latter waved it back.
"Do you mean you sat down at the table and ate with them?"

"That's what I did. It would have been better could they have sat down at my table and eaten with me, for then I could have selected the things to eat, and food makes such a difference in a man's feelings. But there isn't such a great difference in people when you know them through and through, and I had a lovely time taking supper with them. I really did. I told you about the Milligans. Don't you remember I was sick the next day?"

Miss Gibbie shook her head. "Never told me. Glad you were sick."

"Not sick enough to hurt, or to keep me from the Mowrys the next night. The Mowrys didn't have but four kinds of bread and three kinds of cake and two kinds of meats and some other things, but you couldn't see a piece of Mrs. Milligan's table-cloth as big as a salt-cellar, it was so full of food. I took some of everything on the table. Mr. Milligan kept handing me things from his end and Mrs. Milligan from her end, and the little Milligans from the sides, and we laughed so much and I tried so hard to eat I got really excited about it, and of course I was sick the next day. But it didn't matter. We had a beautiful time, and I learned things I never knew before."

She dropped on her knees by the older woman and crossed her arms on her lap. "When I was a little girl, Miss Gibbie, and lived here in the asylum, I used to wish I was a fairy or a witch or a wizard, or something that could make great changes, could turn things round and upside down; could put poor people where were rich, put sad ones where were happy, put the lowly where were the high, and see what they would do. And in the years I have been away, almost ten years, I have been thinking and watching and wondering if half the trouble in the world is not from misunderstanding, from not knowing each other better. And how can we know if each stays in his own little world, never touches the other's life?" She laughed, nodding her head. "I wouldn't discuss Flaubert with Mr. Milligan or Greek Art with Mr. Chinn, but they can tell me a good deal about Yorkburg's needs; and, after all, a person's heart is more important than his head. We are educating people at a terrible rate, but what are we going to do about it if we're not friends when we're through? Of course you can't see my way. You hate dirty people to come near you, but how get them clean if we keep from them?"

Miss Gibbie took up her fan and used it as if already the atmosphere were affected, then she tapped the face in front of her. "I used to be young once and dreamed dreams, but I dreamed them in my own house. I might understand how you could eat with any sort of sinner—I've eaten with all sorts—but with people who put their knives in their mouths and don't clean their finger-nails!"