here, is that they are so horribly vulgar in their conversation and
murder the Queen's English so dreadfully. But won't you and I have
good times saying the rules in concert?"

Unfortunately Mary's knowledge of grammar was rather limited, and as
she did not exactly fancy Sal's proposition, she answered that she
had nearly forgotten all she ever knew of grammar.

"Oh, that's nothing, child that's nothing," said Sal. "It will return
to you gradually. Why, things that happened forty years ago and were
forgotten twenty years ago come back to me every day, but then I
always did forget more in one night than some people, Miss Grundy, for
instance, ever knew in all their life."

"Have you lived here long?" asked Mary.

"Yes, a great while," and the expression of Sally's face grew graver,
as she added, "Perhaps you don't know that I lost little Willie, and
then Willie's father died too, and left me all alone. Their graves are
away on the great western prairies, beneath the buckeye trees, and one
night when the winter wind was howling fearfully, I fancied I heard
little Willie's voice calling to me from out the raging storm. So I
lay down on the turf above my lost darling, and slept so long, that
when I awoke my hair had all turned gray and I was in Chicopee, where
Willie's father used to live. After a while they brought me here and
said I was crazy, but I wasn't. My head was clear as a bell, and I
knew as much as I ever did, only I couldn't tell it, because, you see,
the right words wouldn't come. But I don't care now I've found some
one who knows grammar. How many _genders_ are there, child?"