The Making of Mary | Page 2

a stale crust or two in a cupboard, she wanted no more, for her diet had never been luxurious. Into every corner of the house she intruded her small freckled nose, pulling down from shelves all sorts of odds and ends that had been left behind as worthless at the flitting.
There was an old straw bonnet with a pair of dirty strings, and therewith the damsel elected to adorn the tousled head, which evidenced but slight acquaintance with comb or brush. She could not find any feminine garments to please her fancy, but there was a boy's jacket, out at elbows and ragged round the edges, which she proudly donned, and as a finishing touch she popped her long slim legs, old shoes and all, into a worn-out pair of man's top-boots that reached to her knees.
"I just wish Mawm Mason had lef' a lookin'-glass behin', so's I could see how I look. My! wouldn't she whack me if she seen me with this bonnet on!" The child smiled broadly as she continued her confidential address to the other valueless things left behind. "I allays knowed she warn't my own mother, an' I'm glad Pete nor Matty aint my own brother nor sister neither. I'd like him to see me in his jacket!"
She pulled the coat across her narrow little chest to where it met in the days when there were buttons on it, and marched up and down the room, making as much noise as possible with the big boots.
This killing of time was all very well while the daylight lasted and the sun warmed up the frosty November air, but when the darkness began to assert itself once more the small waif did not feel so contented.
"There aint no use goin' over to Mis' Morgan's. She don't want me no more'n Mis' Mason did. I guess I'll sleep upstairs to-night with some o' them things over me. I'll be warm anyhow."
In the middle of the front bedroom she heaped up all the d��bris and crawled beneath it. A fantastic pile it seemed to the moon when he looked in after the rain had stopped, the childish head resting on the cover of an old bandbox at one side and a pair of man's boots sticking out at the other.
The last scrap of bread was finished next day, and the two potatoes picked up in the yard proved uneatable without the softening influence of fire, so there was nothing for it but Mrs. Morgan's. After sunset, when the rapidly falling temperature and the heavy bank of clouds in the west gave warning of a snow-storm, the little girl, still wearing the old bonnet, boy's jacket, and man's boots, left the only home she could remember, and made her way slowly over the hard rough fields and snake fences to the next farmhouse.
Mrs. Morgan was running in from the barn with a shawl over her head.
"Good sakes alive! Mary Mason! I hardly knowed you. What you got on? I thought you was one o' them scarecrows out o' the fall wheat. Mis' Mason moved to Californy three days ago. Didn't she take you with her?"
"No, mawm."
"So it 'pears. Wal, she hadn't any call to, I s'pose. You aint none o' hers."
By this time they were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Mrs. Morgan rubbing her hands above the stove, and Mary Mason also venturing near, stretching out her thin arms to the heat, for the adopted jacket was somewhat short in the sleeves.
"What's that mark on yer wrist?"
"Bruise--but it don't hurt now."
"Who done it?"
"Ma--Mis' Mason. I've lots worse'n that on me," said the small girl with some vanity.
"There, now! I jest knew that Mis' Mason was a hard case, though my man would never hear to it. What you going to do now?"
"I dunno." The accent implied that to be a matter of small moment.
"I don't s'pose we can turn you out to-night. There's room in the attic for you to sleep, but don't you go near one o' my girls' beds with that head o' yourn."
As a hostess, Mrs. Morgan was a slight improvement upon Mrs. Mason. She never took stick or strap to the foundling, and if she occasionally gave her a cuff on the ear it was never strong enough to knock the girl down. But the Morgan children bullied Mary Mason, the Morgan father grumbled at an extra mouth to feed, and when she had been about a month in the house the mistress of it told her she must move on.
"There's an old dress of Ellie's you can have, an' a pair of Sue's cast-off boots, and Tom's old cap."
"Where am I to go, mawm?"
"You jest go on from one farmhouse to another, till you find a place where they'll keep you all winter. It's