home life. But things never really began to happen to me, I mean things
that actually counted, until Jane Gray came. After that it looked as if
they were never going to stop.

You see I'd lived about fifty-eight years of solid monotony, broken only
by the novelty of coming to Japan as a school teacher thirty years
before and, although my soul yearned for the chance to indulge in the
frills of romance, opportunity to do so was about the only thing that
failed to knock at my door. From the time I heard the name of Ursula
Priscilla Jenkins and knew it belonged to me, I can recall but one
beautiful memory of my childhood. It is the face of my mother in its
frame of poke bonnet and pink roses, as she leaned over to kiss me
good-by. I never saw her again, nor my father. Yellow fever laid heavy
tribute upon our southern United States. I was the only one left in the
big house on the plantation, and my old black nurse was the sole
survivor in the servants' quarters. She took me to an orphan asylum in a
straggly little southern town where everything from river banks to
complexions was mud color.

Bareness and spareness were the rule, and when the tall, bony, woman
manager stood near the yellow-brown partition, it took keen eyes to tell
just where her face left off and the plaster began. She did not believe
in education. But I was born with ideas of my own and a goodly share of
ambition. I learned to read by secretly borrowing from the wharf master
a newspaper or an occasional magazine which sometimes strayed off a
river packet. Then I paid for a four years' course at a neighboring
semi-college by working and by serving the other students. I did
everything--from polishing their shoes to studying their lessons for
them; it earned me many a penny and a varied knowledge of human nature.
But nothing ever happened to me as it did to the other girls. I never