Mary opened her mouth wide and began tugging at her own little white teeth.
“Them doesn’t hurt me,” she said.
“Ah but they did, Miss Mary,” said nurse. “Many a night you couldn’t sleep for crying with the pain of them, but you can’t remember it.”
“It’s very funny,” said Mary.
“What’s funny?” asked Leigh.
“About ’amembering,” answered Mary, and a puzzled look came into her face. “Can you ’amember when you was a tiny baby, nurse?”
“No, my dear, nobody can,” said nurse. “But don’t worry yourself about understanding things of that kind.”
“There’s somefin in my head now that I can’t ’amember,” said Mary, “somefin papa said. It’s that that’s teasing me, nurse. I don’t like to not ’amember what papa said.”
“You must ask him to-morrow, dearie,” nurse answered. “You’ll give yourself a headache if you go on trying too hard to remember.”
“Isn’t it funny how things go out of our minds like that?” said Leigh. “I’ll tell you what I think it is. I think our minds are like cupboards or chests of drawers, and some of the things get poked very far back so that we can’t get at them when we want them. You see the newest things are at the front, that’s how we can remember things that have just happened and not things long ago.”