The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

Last summer Rufe said I was so clever for my age (he said) that I ought to be in the city (I like this kind of advice) at a good school; so father and mother decided to move to the city and take Mammy Lou and spend the winter and all the other winters until I could get educated and live in a flat. So we went, me writing much sorry poetry about leaving my old home. The older I get the more I think of poetry and I reckon by the time I'm engaged I'll be crazy about it!

Our leaving was very sad, poor little Lares and Penates crying so hard at the depot where they went to tell Mammy Lou good-by that a drummer who was traveling with a kind heart gave them a quarter apiece to hush.

I never admired the name of flat from the first and when we started to rent one I admired it less than ever. It consists of a very large house, divided up, and no place to kill a chicken. There is also no place to warm your feet, nor to pop corn. In fact, there are more places where you can't do things than where you can. Rufe took us to every one in town nearly, and mammy paid particular attention to how the kitchens were fixed and asked what became of the potato peelings with no pigs to eat them up. Finally, after everything had been explained to her, she spoke up in the midst of a lady's flat with tears in her eyes and said:

"Mis' Mary, le's go back to the country whar slop is called slop; up here it's 'gawbage!'"

Father and mother were both delighted that going back had been mentioned without either one of them saying it first, for both of their feet were sore from looking for flats; and they like to have fallen over each other in agreeing with mammy.

"God never intended for human beings to live in flats," father said, after the elevator had put us down on dry land once more, drawing a deep breath.

"Nor in cities either," Rufe agreed, with a far-away look in his eyes, like he might be thinking of the chestnut hunts and black haws of his boyhood.

That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and I had to be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and they lose their job. Then the son gets sent away to India with his regiment, where he hopes he can meet sweet death through a bullet hole. This is the way they are in books.

Mine, though, is not anything like that, being very pretty and pink, and with a regular father and mother like other folks have. But there is a great mystery connected with her. Don't anybody but me know about it, and I don't know all about it. From the very first she seemed to have something on her mind; this is very unusual for a young girl, so I tried to find out what the cause of it was. One day at the dinner table when she had been here about two weeks father remarked that I was learning faster from her than I ever had, and he hoped that she would stay here with us until I was finished being educated and not be wanting to get married, like most young ladies. Miss Wilburn, instead of laughing as one would expect, turned red in the face (her first name is Louise) and said something that sounded like "Oh no!"

Mammy, who was in the room at the time, spoke up as she usually does and said well, there must be something wrong with her if she didn't want to marry, as all right-minded women married once and extra smart ones married as often as there was any occasion to! Instead of smiling Miss Wilburn looked more painful than ever; so mammy, who thinks enough of her to even do up her shirtwaists, changed the subject.