Mary Cary, Frequently Martha

<h2><SPAN name="VII" id="VII"></SPAN>VII</h2> <h2>"STERILIZED AND FERTILIZED"</h2> <p>This is Sunday, and we have done all the usual Sunday things. There won't be another for seven days. For that we give thanks in our hearts, but not out loud.</p> <p>This was Presbyterian Sunday. Miss Bray is a Presbyterian.</p> <p>It is a solemn thing to be a Presbyterian, and easy for the mind, too. Everything is fixed, and there is no unfixing. You are saved or you are not saved, and you will never know which it is until after you are dead and find out. Miss Bray believes she is saved, and she takes liberties. She also thinks everything is as God ordered it, and she believes God ordered poor Mrs. Craddock to die&mdash;that is, took her away. I don't. I think it was that last baby.</p> <p>She had had twelve, and the thirteenth just wore her out at the thought. There being nobody to do anything for her, she got up and cooked breakfast in her stocking feet when the baby was only a week old, and that night she had the influenza, and the next pneumonia. On the sixth day she was dead, and so was the baby. They forgot to feed it.</p> <p>I don't believe God ever took any mothers away intentional. He never would have made them so necessary if He had meant to take them away when they were most needed. When they go I believe He is sorry.</p> <p>I don't know how to explain it. Nobody does, though a lot try. But I know He sees it bigger than we do, and maybe He is working at something that isn't finished yet.</p> <p>Minnie Peters is real sick. Miss Katherine has put her in the hospital-room, and is staying in there with her.</p> <p>I am all alone by myself to-night. I don't like aloneness at night. It makes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherine says is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseases put together.</p> <p>She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often different from the way other people feel about it. And when you don't agree with people, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don't agree with you. I believe that's true. Not being by nature much of an agree-er, and having feelings I hope others don't, I would be a walking argument if Miss Katherine hadn't stopped me and explained some things I didn't realize before.</p> <p>Last night, being by myself, and not being able to go to sleep, I wrote a piece of poetry.</p> <p>Miss Katherine says it's hard to forgive people who think they write poetry, so I won't show her this. But it does relieve you to write down a lot of woozy nothing that is somehow like you feel. This is the poem&mdash;I mean the verses:</p> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span>1<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>Out upon life's ocean vast,<br/></span> <span>With the current drifting fast,<br/></span> <span>I am sailing. Oh, alas,<br/></span> <span>'Tis a lonely feeling!<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>2<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>Why was such a trip e'er started<br/></span> <span>On a pathway all uncharted?<br/></span> <span>Why from loved ones was I parted?<br/></span> <span>Who will answer? Who?<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>3<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>None will answer. So I'll see<br/></span> <span>What there is on this journey (journee)<br/></span> <span>That will bring good-luck to me&mdash;<br/></span> <span>I'll look out and see!<br/></span></div> </div> <p>I hope Minnie isn't going to be sick long. She is the first girl to be really ill since Miss Katherine came. It makes you feel so queer in the throat to know somebody is truly sick.</p> <p>A lot of the girls have been sick a little with colds and small and unserious diseases in the past year. But Miss Katherine says it's her business to keep us well, not just get us well after we're sick, and she's certainly done it. We've been weller than we ever were in our lives, and no medicine taken. Just plain common-sense regulations.</p> <p>I wonder what's the matter with Minnie? The doctor hasn't said, but Miss Katherine is uneasy, and she won't let anybody come in the room. She hasn't been out herself since yesterday.</p> <hr style='width: 45%;' /> <p>My, but we've had a time lately!</p> <p>We've been fumigated and sterilized and fertilized so much that we are better prepared for the happy-land than we ever were before. But the danger of anybody going to it right away is over.</p> <p>Minnie Peters has had scarlet fever, and the commotion made her real famous.</p> <p>Miss Katherine knew it from the first, but Dr. Rudd wouldn't believe it until he had to, and Yorkburg got so excited it hasn't talked of anything else for weeks.</p> <p>Minnie was awful ill. Two days and two nights they didn't think she would live, and for three weeks Miss Katherine didn't leave the room. If it hadn't been for her Minnie would be dead.</p> <p>Miss Katherine's room has been closed since they first found out it was really scarlet fever Minnie had, and I have been in No. 4 again. She is going away to spend a week with Miss Webb. Going to-morrow.</p> <p>I am so glad she is going. All of us are glad, for she has had to do something which shows whether you are a Christ-kind Christian or the usual kind, and she is tired out. She won't admit it, though, and laughs and kisses her hand over the banister, which is all the closer we have seen her yet.</p> <p>Miss Bray was scared to death. She didn't offer to share the nursing, but she made excuses a-plenty for not doing it. Miss Bray is a church Christian. You couldn't make her miss going to church. She thinks she'd have bad luck if she did.</p> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />