"Oh," I says, "it isn't that. I guess you don't understand"—I thought I ought to tell her just the truth—"I can't act the way you're used to, I'm afraid," I said. "I'm learning—but I had a lot to know."
She laughed, and made me go. I wondered why. But I couldn't help going. I thought of all the mistakes I'd make—but then, I'd learn something, too. "Just be yourself," Miss Antoinette said. And I said, "Myself buttered a whole slice of bread and bit it for a week before I noticed that the rest didn't." And when she said, "Yourself did not. You got that from other people in the first place," I asked her, "Then, what is myself?" And she says, "That's what we're at school to find out!"
It was in a big house on the Hudson that the Massys lived. I saw some glass houses for flowers. When the door was opened I saw a lot more flowers and a stained glass window and a big hall fire.
"Oh!" I says. "Can farm-houses be like that?"
"What does she mean?" says Mrs. Massy, and shook hands with me. I wanted to laugh when I looked at her. She was little and thick everywhere, and she had on a good many things, and she looked so anxious! It didn't seem as if there was enough things in all the world to make anybody look so anxious about them.
Dinner was at half past seven. In Katytown supper is all over by half past six, and at half past seven the post-office is shut. I had a little light cloth dress, and I put that on; and then I just set down and looked around my room. There was a big bed with a kind of a flowered umbrella over it with lace hanging down; and a little low dressing table, all white and glass, and my own bath showed through the open door. And looking around that room and remembering how the house was, I thought:
"Oh, if Mother could have had things fixed up a little, maybe she could have been different herself. Maybe then she'd have been Mother instead of 'Ma' from the beginning."
In the drawing-room were Mrs. Massy and Mr. Gerald, her looking like a little, fat, bright-colored ball, and him like a man on some stage—better than any man I'd seen in the Katytown opera-house attractions, even. The dining-room was lovely, and the table was like a long wide puzzle. I watched Miss Antoinette, and I done like her, word for word, food for food, tool for tool. They talked more about nothing than anybody I'd ever heard. Mrs. Massy would take the most innocent little remark, and worry it like a terrier, and run off with the pieces, making a new remark of each one. She had things enough around her neck to choke her if they'd all got to going. There were two guests, enormous women with lovely velvet belts for waists. They talked in bursts and gushes and up on their high tiptoes—I can't explain it. It was like another language, all irregular. I just kept still, and ate, and one or two things I couldn't comprehend I didn't take any of. Everything would have been all right if only one of the guests hadn't thought of something funny to tell.
"Elwell sounded the horn right in the midst of a group of factory girls to-night," she said. "We were in a tearing hurry and we didn't see them. And one of them stood still, right in the road, and she said, 'You go round me.' Why, she might have been killed! and then we should have been arrested. Elwell had all he could do to swing the car."