for something real exciting to put down, I am going to write my history.

I don't know very much about who I am. I wish my Mother had left a diary
about herself, but she didn't. Nobody, not even Miss Katherine, will
tell me who I was before I came here, which I did when I was three. I
know my nurse brought me, but I can't remember what she looked like, and
when she went away without me: I never saw nor heard of her again. I
don't even know her name. I thought it was fine to play in a big yard
with a lot of children, and I soon stopped crying for my nurse.

I never did see much sense in crying. Everybody was good to me, and not
being old enough to know I was a Charity child, and by nature happy,
they used to call me Cricket. Sometimes some of them call me that now.

A hundred dozen times I have asked Miss Katherine to tell me something
about myself, but in some way she always gets out of it. I know my
mother and father are dead, but that's all I do know; and I wouldn't ask
Miss Bray if I had to stand alone for ever and ever.

Sometimes I believe Miss Katherine knows something she won't tell me,
but since I found out she don't like me to ask her I've stopped. And not
being able to ask out what I'd like, I think a lot more, and some nights
when I can't go to sleep, it gives me an awful sinking feeling right
down in my stomach, to think in all this great big world there isn't a
human that's any kin to me.

I might have come from the heavens above or the depths below, only I
didn't, and being like other girls in size and shape and feelings, I
know I once did have a Mother and Father. But if they had relations
they've kept quiet, and it's plain they don't want to know anything