three times. She was dreadful careless with her husbands and had mislaid
'em all. Not bein' able to find 'em again, she just reckoned on their
bein' dead and was thinkin' of marryin' some more.

[Sidenote: Keeping Margaret Young]

"Seems to me it's a mistake for anybody to marry more'n once. In one of
Roger's books it says somethin' about a second marriage bein' the
triumph of hope over experience. Magdalene Mather was dreadful hopeful
and kept thinkin' that maybe she could get somebody who would stay with
her without bein' chained up. Meanwhile it was to her interest to keep
little Margaret as young as possible.

"Margaret thought she was ten when she went to live with Magdalene, but
she soon learned that it was a mistake and she got to be only seven in
less'n half an hour. Magdalene put shorter dresses on her and kept her
in white and gave her shoes without any heels, and these little short
socks that show a foot or so of bare leg and which is indecent, if
fashionable.

"Margaret's birthdays kept gettin' farther and farther apart, and as
soon as the neighbours begun to notice that Margaret wasn't agin' like
everybody else, why, Magdalene would just pack up and go to a new place.

"She didn't go to school, but had private teachers, because it was in
the will that she was to be educated like a real lady. Any teacher who
thought Margaret was too far advanced for her age got fired the minute
it was spoke of, and pretty soon Margaret got onto it herself. She used
to tell teachers she liked to say that she was very backward in her
studies, and tell those she didn't like that Aunty Magdalene would be