Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary with
fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white
calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats
with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing
fingers when it's cold, and no ice-water when it's hot.

Yes, dear Mary, you and I are going to marry a rich man. (Martha is
writing to-day.) I will try to love him, but if I can't I will be polite
to him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be rich
some day. I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, for
the clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they're going to
be so grand. Miss Katherine would be ashamed of that and make me
ashamed, but this writing is for the relief of feelings.

But there's one thing I'm surer of than I am of being rich, and that is
that there are to be no secrets about my children's mother. They are to
know all about me I can tell, which won't be much or distinguished, but
what there is they're to know. And that's the chief reason I'm going to
write my history, so as to remember in case I forget.

Well, now I will begin. I am eleven years and eleven months and three
days old. I don't have birthday parties. The Yorkburg Female Orphan
Asylum is a large house with a wide hall in the middle, and a wing on
one side that makes it look like Major Green, who lost one arm in the
war.

There are large grounds around the house, and around the grounds is a
high brick wall in front and a wooden fence back and sides. The children
and the chickens use the grounds at the back; the front has grass and
flowers, and is for company, which is seldom. Sometimes, just because I