hotel."

"No, but it ought to be a home, if possible," said Mrs. Carr, and Peelie
said she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven her
husband stood her all the time.

I certainly am glad to know I'm paid for. Some day, when I'm grown and
earning my own living, before I marry my children's father, I am going
to give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Parke. Of course
that will be some time off, and until then I'll just have to try to be
a nice person.

Miss Katherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to have
a nice person in the house with them--one of those cheerful, sunshiny
kind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they fall
down. As I can't earn money yet, I'm going to try to be something like
that, so they won't be sorry I ever was born. Uncle Parke and Miss
Katherine won't.

But isn't it strange, when the time comes for you to do a thing you are
crazy to do, you wish it hadn't come?

There have been days when I hated this Asylum. I've felt at times that I
was just one of the numbers of the multiplication table, and in all my
life I'd never be anything else. And I'd almost sweep the bricks up out
of the yard, I'd be so mad to think I was nothing and nobody.

I wanted to be something and somebody. I didn't want to die and be
forgotten. I would have liked to sit on St. John's Church steeple and
have everybody look at me and say: