Chapter III: Part 3

I loved Katy’s baby so fierce I had most forgotten to want one of my own when Isabella came in the night and the next morning I heard her cry in Mama’s bed and was crazy glad and ran to look but such a dizzypoint fell on me for her to be little and red and blackfuzzy and Katy’s baby so beautiful. O Mother, I write this with red shame on my cheeks to think of me so mean and wicked but I must tell you all even if it makes you have a black spot of dispizement for me in your soul _I tried to trade babies with Katy_! I offered her all my hair ribbons and my red beads and even my badeye charm but she said not on her sweet life for mine was the common Dago kind so if you dropped her on the steps you couldn’t tell again which one she was and so little I would be getting ten pounds more baby.

God was good to me as I never deserved not to let her trade since her baby died and I would have been left without any little sister and serve me right for my evil heart. I saw that dear baby just the day before in Katy’s house and I thought it not to be sick as they said with its cheeks so pink, but the next tomorrow it was dead. The Chairs asks which is your beautifullest remember and that is mine--Katy’s baby lying on the table among its candles, its face all over clean at once and dressed in white embroidery like richness. It seemed as if it must wake up in surprise and reach for those teeny blue shoes such as it never dreamed on itself. The look on its face was just as though an angel was whispering creepymouse in its ear. I cried more than Katy which she said was no fair and I kissed many times its little hands like cold snow. They took it away with grand style and much weeps out loud and three carriages and a white hurse and a bouquet of genuine flowers bigger than it, a present from the alderman which must have cost plenty.

Isabella had grown some bigger by that time and her curls had started only they were still black and not gold. When the funeral proceshun was gone, I went again upstairs and hugged her not to be dead and cold and whispered did she forgive her wicked sister to try to trade and she guggled “yes” and I cried some more into her apron for my little Irish niece deadngone to the semitary.

Katy returned from her funeral very sad and hawty. I offered her Isabella to hold for comfort but she sobbed “no, thanks, her own or none” and she let everybody sit by her side on the top step. I saw by such politeness her heart to be broke intirely as she said it was.

Katy’s family moved away pretty soon because the alderman fixed her Papa with a better job to drive a big sweep-the-streets machine of nights and they went to a grand Irish tenement with a bathtub and foldup bed in the parlor glorybe.

I truly love this school, Mother, but not more than I loved the First-Grade in that time. It was fine to be the monitor to all the pencils in my row and the teacher’s petticoat rustled grand and silken down the aisle and her smile was hardly ever off her face--just when some boy was mean. My hand would most wave itself broke to say the words on the blackboard and I loved to sing

“Twenty froggys went to school
Down beside the Russhen pool.”

I went home different ways to find that pool but none on our block was Russhen, just all Dago with men hitting little balls and no froggys to see.

You must have been the Dolly kind of little girl, Mother and O so fine and wonderful! Please please write your youthfullest rememberants to me in your next precious letter. My Mama that died used to tell me about when she was a little girl in Italy. She would get glad to talk of Italy--how it is warm, fresh and light, the neighbors sing like the fountins; fig and olive trees grow thick there as the garbige cans of America. We would dance the tarantella very happy but pretty soon it would make worse her cough and then she would cry and say how cold, sad, dark and ugly is this country and all times like Good Friday. She was a very good kind of Mama and where she was that place seemed ever sweet and shiney unto me.

The curious chair wants to know how we made our first start to feel grownup. Dolly says her shoes keep climbing higher and higher up her ankels and her skirts keep falling down lower and lower. When they meet she will be a young lady.

I must have stayed kiddish forever to wait for that because my dresses not like Dolly’s would get shrinker and shrinker and my legs would grow longer and longer so my shoes and skirts must get more apart for boys at school to holler “broomsticks! broomsticks!” as I hated them to so holler.

I guess my grownup feelings sprouted in me one tragicky winter full of woe when Papa’s fruit would freeze and freeze and lose him plenty of money and we got all pawned out and had to move back into an old behind tenement very dark and cold so I was glad Katy was gone not to see. The cough of my Mama that died got awful worse and no fire seemed to warm us with the little coal we had and Tony sat by the stove and wouldn’t play anything but lame boy and his knee was bad but he never said it was real--only his play. It was a good thing I was eight that birthday to do the work. My Papa fixed a box by the stove and a box by the cubboard so I could reach and also put our tub on to wash, only Isabella always tried to fall in that tub and be drounded. I had no time for doorsteps and anyway it was too cold.

The walk-in districk nurse came every day to put a new bandige on Tony’s knee and fix Mama what comfy she could. One morning I put Mama and Tony’s breakfast on the box by the stove while I filled the teakettle and Tony never noticed and put his foot in it and I slapped him--my poor little lame brother with a bandige on his knee! O Mother, when he was awful sicker in the hospital I begged him to slap me back but he wouldn’t, so that slap I put on Tony must stay on me till I die.

And I can’t have the delishus dinner I got now in a basket and take it to Mama and Tony to make them glad. When persons are in some other place perhaps you can get there to walk enough, but you cannot walk to them in a new time after theirs is all past and finished up.

I know that winter was when I got the habit of growing up for the nurse to say as she did “you poor little old woman!”

Then one day very sudden it was spring and warm by the sun and some grass trying to grow itself in a crack of the sidewalk and Tony went outdoors with his new crutch. That day the walk-in nurse helped me like a sick one into a pink dress terrible short with a big spot where Isabella spillt her mackyrony on me but the best I had. She led me to a beautiful house like no tenement because its rooms had not beds or stoves but pictures and prettys and many parlors which must be bigger and grander than the glorybe parlor of Katy. Some children were firing little pillows full of beans at a hole--so silly I thought and beans good to eat.

Then the walk-in nurse opened a door and that was the door to all my joy. Many girls sewed in a club and one hollered very mean “I know her--that’s Giovanna Long-legs,” and all laughed. My wish was to cry and run home, but O the wonderfulest enchantingest lady which was you hugged me with your arm and put shame on those girls and asked me did I want to sew doll rags? I was embearest dreadful but answered “no, please I am too old.” Your smile was truly Heavenly as you gave me a dress to make for Isabella and put me close by your side. That was the day my love for you got planted in the ground of my heart.

But, Mother, I could not have sat there and sewed so happy if I had known God was planning all those funerals for our family. And if any angel had whispered in your ear that day how the funny little new Dago kid of the long legs would get to be your ownest ownest daughter, I think you would have told that angel “Guess again and don’t be abzurd!”

Now in this letter you got me from the start and I am for keeps and keeps and keeps

Your Giovanna.

GIOVANNA AS THE WRONG PRINCESS

_Adorablest Mother_,

My times in this school get better and better and now my tiptopest joy of all is that I am to act in a real play. The Principal divided us girls into program groops and my Dolly chum is writing O a gorjous drama just out of her own thinks for our groop to give next month.

First Dolly read a book from the library how to make plays, but that book only gave her much discurage and her head to ache therefore she decided younity and atmosphear are too much style for a school play and not to have them in hers. So she writes it absolootly by inspuration same as poetry only worse for long and often which is terrible. That inspuration falls on her in the middle of nights and just in front of dessert and once when climbing the trapeeze so she lost her hold, but on the floor stayed her play notebook and when the gym teacher came running to see how bad she was hurt, there she lay to scribble, scribble like crazy and never knew her bumps until they turned their bumpy color. O Mother, how wonderful is genius!

The Age of Dolly’s play is Middle because then all persons wore costumes instead of clothes and were romantic every minute. Dolly adores romance which it is her grief and woe to be now so scarce and most extinkt. The Principal likes that time because petticoats were good form for gentlemen, so the King girl can be real modish in a red kimono trimmed by bands of cotton decorated with ink blots, and the other mail characters will keep on their long cloaks so their gym suits won’t show.

Dolly can’t dyvulge the plot yet because the characters are so opstreperus that whatever she writes them to do they fuss back at her to fix it all different. She says that’s because, being the children of her brains, they must take after her in temperment. But we girls coaxed and teased her most crazy till she consented to give us just an introduckshun no more to those desperit tempermental characters.

Dolly will act the Right Princess as the playwrite must ever be leading lady or no fair, and I am the Wrong Princess which is the next best part for being her chum. The rest are the King, Queen, Noble, Prince of the Long Feather, Cruel Jailer, Wicked Witch, and four Hop-livelys who must be sometimes pezzents (which means not birds but the poor and humble obliged to dust with their aprons the chairs of nobility) sometimes kitchen sculpins and sometimes pop-up ghosts.

Dolly says the Wrong Princess gets taken for the real kind at first but by and by she is expozed and found out to be nothing but a half orphan of the Wicked Witch. Already I love my part because to be any princess whatsoever will be magnificent like I never dreamed. I try hard with my manners, Mother, I do indeed, but they are not the teeniest bit enough good for even the wrong kind of princess. I must just watch them now like cats and mice not to put shame on you by the rudeness of my princess ways. But the half orphan piece of my part I guess I will understand to act as some girl of two parents might not.

I knew a little girl in another dormitory of our asylum who was fairy once at a genuine theater and she told how in a play you are always fine and wonderful like makebelieve come true only she always wished it wouldn’t be over so dreadful quick.

O Mother, I go upstairs and downstairs in all the rooms of this school so happy to think on my character in Dolly’s drama that scarcely can my feet walk and not skippity skippity as would be no proper princess manners. I love Dolly more than I ever did, which was lots already, to see her write in her play notebook those good grand words for me to speak. It is diffycult not to feel haughty when I think that a backward like me has genius for her chum.

Your joyful-up-to-the-sky
Wrong Princess.

* * * * *

_O Mother Dear and Only Comfort_,

I most wish I was an old old lady dead in my peaceful grave so Dolly would get repentants on herself for her perfiddy and she calls perfiddy on me the same when I perfidded nothing and she all. Now we are no more chums and never can be in our long lives.

Dolly had promised, when the play was finished up, to read it first to me like a secret, so last night after supper I ran with her very happy to our room, and O dear! O dear! how I wish that inspuration had never dropped on her. When she began to read we were the lovingest friends and when she stopped we were the hatingest enemies.

The play makes its start with the King and Queen discovered on top of their thrones talking about their believed-to-be child, the Wrong Princess--how vile and evil is her dishpishum and how dark her looks--just like me. Her name is Zeerooty as any girl so wicked must have her name spelled with Z to hiss like the snakes in her black heart.

The King says “Adzooks! cheer up, Mrs. Queen. This is the day the Noble Prince of the Long Feather comes to be her sooter. He will marry her away from us and good riddants to our Zeerooty.” The Queen has scares the Noble Prince won’t like the blackness and tempers of Zeerooty and says weddings in the dark are real stylish among her set, but the king only zooks some more.

Dolly must read hard and fast to finish before the electric light would go off, so she never looked at me to know the feelings sprouting in my soul. I kept myself still and spoke not with hopes the King and Queen were some mistaken and me not to be so mean as their thinks.

Then in the play a Hop-lively announces the Noble Prince of the Long Feather who enters the stage followed by the other three Hop-livelys. When all finish their politeness, that Zeerooty comes along tagged by Dolly dressed in her white silk with a big black patch basted on its front breath to show how poor and dispized she is because believed to be just the child of the Wicked Witch and given to Zeerooty for a sort of slave since the Witch has got everybody spelled so they don’t know that Zeerooty is her own black brat and Dolly the Right Princess.

Zeerooty never notices the Prince and all those Hop-livelys though I don’t see how she can help it and not be blind. She saucys her Mama Queen and kicks her Papa King on his foot. Then she discovers the Prince and has much astonish for that. She likes him fine and her manners are quick honeytaffy. She puts out her hand for him to kiss like she is the sunflower of the world, but scarcely can the Prince kiss that hand for his looks of love on Dolly.

Zeerooty perceeves those looks and goes back to acting like scandles. She throws her gloves, hat, and hanky on the floor for Dolly to pick them up and slaps her on the cheek.

O that slap was the worst ever to go from me to Dolly in her drama! It is the true, Mother, I slapped Dolly my first day in this school because I spilled the gravy on her and she put the name goosey to you for thinking I could get made into a lady. But that is so long past and see how we have been chums ever since the girls took the tayboo off me and now for her to go put that slap in her play when I thought it all forgiven up--O Mother, it hurt so bad I couldn’t even speak that first minute like once when I caught my finger in the door.

When Dolly read on, our electric study lamp went to bobbing itself round in funny ways and throwing out long strings of light into my eyes.

In the second act, Dolly is discovered dusting and dusting those thrones and the Prince tells her how sweetysweet she is and that Zeerooty so bominable which is the true--I could put no blame on him for that. He wants to marry Dolly instead of me and her young heart beats for him alone. Then I, which is Zeerooty come on and catch them in their actions. I stamp and yell so fierce all the court rush there with scares of fire. Zeerooty demands to have the Noble Prince boiled in oil with chilly sauce, mean old thing that I am! The King answers boiling a guest would be inhospittable and no good form and make war with his parents but to our lowest dunjun let him go until he can love Zeerooty and he is halled off by the Cruel Jailor while Dolly weeps into her hanky.

After that things are truly awfuller than they can be Dolly tries to rescew the Noble Prince and gets caught and dunjuned herself by the cruel Jailer, so it looks like all is over with the lovery pair. But the Cruel Jailer gets a tender spot in his tough breast and the Wicked Witch falls into her own kettle and then her spells don’t work and Zeerooty is found out to be the Wrong Princess and Dolly the Right One. Dolly is let to marry the Noble Prince of the Long Feather and Zeerooty is put out the castle gate scratching firce all the Hop-livelys who got the job to reject her and screeching swears of “Zounds! Zounds!” like the cat vickson she is to the last and no lady!

When she finished reading, my used-to-be chum actually asked if my part wasn’t just grand? I felt as a volcano when it is volcanoizing. I told her my opinion of that despizable old black snubbish Zeerooty mean as mud. I asked her what sort of mad she had kept hid away in her heart all our months of being chums that she could make me such a part to slap Dollys in her play and saucy mothers and kick fathers and boil princes like a cannible heathen?

Dolly just laughed and said Zeerooty was dandy and a real actress would know her for a splendid part.

I answered I was awear that while I might be Dago black and lean like broomsticks and used to be a slapper when I came, I was one no more but had learned better in this school where my Mother put me for such manners not to stay on me any more as the manners of that Zeerooty whom I hated and detested and bominated like a poison weed and never would I play myself to be her!

Then Dolly got mad at me like I already was at her, only she had no cause as she can ask her consceince and let it tell her what she did first to me--not counting that way-back slap.

Dolly exclaimed that genius never gets its dews this side of the silentomb, so she don’t expect it, but to think I could take such an ignoranty pursonal view of Zeerooty. She asked if after she wrote special for me that almost starry part did I really refuse to be it?

I answered “Yes, I refuse forever and ever and all the time after that to be Zeerooty.” Dolly said “This breaks the chain which binds us” and I spoke back that chain to be already busted when she read me about that mean slapping Zeerooty thing she wrote to put me into.

Dolly answered she would never never speak to me again and I told her I would not to her in all my long life and we both cried on our beds. When we must get up to undress, Dolly took off the nugget bracelet I gave her Christmas and put it on my bureau and me the same on hers with the silver candlestick she gave me.

So now I lost my chum all on account of that Zeerooty. I never expected to slap any girl again but I would Zeerooty if she were only in the world to receive my slap. And I won’t play her! I won’t! I won’t! I wont!

Your mad and Sorry
Giovanna.

* * * * *

_Angel Mother All I Got_,

It is now three days that Dolly and I don’t speak any more than frozen icicles and I most wish I was one to fall down and break into little pieces and be finished. My heart is so heavy, it’s like carrying the coal-hod at the asylum to get upstairs with it to my room. Dolly and I both got the proudness not to tell what our mad is about so the other girls guess much but know nothing.

O Mother, if I had never been born, what troubles I would have missed, most of all this cold mad lonesome to be a deafndumb with Dolly studying on her side of our room a deafndumb also, and she my used-to-be-dearest next to you.

If Dolly would only say she is sorry she wrote that Zeerooty on me I could forgive her in a minute, but she never will. And I don’t blame Dolly, Mother, as I do Zeerooty her own self. You know how Dolly told that those characters would fuss back at her and dicktate how they wanted to be fixed. Dolly is ever a quick forgiver and never would have thought to stick in that blow for all the girls to remember me as I was in my slapping days if Zeerooty has not hipnotized her to do it.

But now she has chozen between me and that Zeerooty whom she loves like a mother her bad child to think all its meanness darling and cute. She cannot see me write in this letter “Dear Dolly, take me and not your old Zeerooty,” but I wouldn’t say it to her out loud, not for the big round world in my pocket. Goodbye my Dolly chum, I hope Zeerooty makes you happy you don’t look happy though, but sorry and frozeup same as me.

I feel my cry is coming Mother, and I must get to bed quick and sqush it in the pillow for Dolly not to hear. I’m glad you are not a chum to bandon me for some old Zeerooty. Mothers are just the one thing in the world you can always keep unless God takes them up to Heaven.

Goodnight truest and darlingist,
Giovanna.

* * * * *

_Treasure Mother_,

A real lady actress, friend to the Principal, came and performed like Lady Macbeth in Assembly this afternoon just for us girls. I was so blue I didn’t want to go but we all must. She was dressed very curious and talked for her husband Mr. Macbeth also just as I used to for my doll only she made her voice big instead of little. He wanted to be king as the witches proffyside but he had some feelings not to kill the nice gentle old really truly king come to visit him like an uncle and explained how murdering your company is not good form. I guess Lady Macbeth’s first name must begin with Z. O Mother, I shook till it squeeked the seat when she dared him and called him old fraidcat. Of course he didn’t have to mind her but a wife ought to keep her husband out of meanness all she can and not put him up to more like Lady Macbeth.

I was sure that actress lady must be very bad by nature to look like that out of her eyes and dangerous, ever full of meanness to do somebody. I wondered how our dear Principal could stand her for a friend.

When she came in the reception room after she had acted I did not know her in a tailor suit and smiling sweet, not a bit like that Lady Macbeth. I was standing close by the Principal and my astonish jumped right out of me to say how she looked not mean but a lovely lady. The Principal laughed and told how good that actress is to her little brothers and orphans and beggars and adored by all.

O the Principal made me most die of mortifide to lead me to the actress lady and introdoose me by telling right out loud my thinks of her. But she was so Heavenly tackfull Mother, that by and by I could ask her the question sticking right out of my soul to be asked--how she could act herself into a mean one like Lady Macbeth whom she must ever hate and put on her looks and ways for all persons to detest and not love.

When she was gone I ran quick upstairs with my heart no more like coal hods. There sat Dolly on her side writing like crazy in her play notebook. I never thought not to speak first and I cried out, “O Dolly, it is the duty of my face to be a picture of Zeerooty’s face and my voice to sound like hers and my actions to be same as her actions to show the audients what Zeerooty is like and not what I am like which does not count at such a time. What a silly I was--all ignoranty and pursynal like you said--so please forgive and I will play Zeerooty dandy as I can.”

Dolly looked up awful sweet out of her writing and answered, “No, Giovanna, you had the right to hate Zeerooty because that actress explained it to be the smartness of Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth to have some good feelings mixed in with her badness and those repentants in her sleep and to be no monster. My Zeerooty was a fusser and a scowler and a screecher every minute which is to be a monster. I’m glad you hated her; she is now detestable to me the same, so here I sit writing some good feelings and repentants into her.”

I asked “Shall Zeerooty walk in my sleep?” and she answered she would be no copycat to Shakespeare but ever origynal and make me into a nun at the last instead of a scratcher of Hop-livelys.

Then I remembered what my real maddest mad was about, only it was so good to be speaking with my Dolly chum again I didn’t much care, but I just asked, “Dolly, would it be the same with you if Zeerooty should pull your hair instead of slap, for the girls to not remember my dreadful scandle of slapping you during my first dinner in this school?”

O Mother, Dolly had forgotten all about that slap or she never would have put it in her play and she begged please forgive. We hugged and kissed like crazy and went down to dinner with our arms around as always. I am so happy I love even poor old naughty Zeerooty.

Your devoted daughter
The Wrong Princess.

GIOVANNA’S COMMENCEMENT

_O Mother Dear_,

Such high sky cheer but feelings queer rezembling fear though love burns clear to know that we’re so close and near.

Why I almost made a sonnut! I must be catching poetry off Dolly’s Muse. A Muse, Mother, is a ghosty person only not made of fog and clam like a real ghost but just of air. It hawnts round waiting to help you write poetry but you got to be a true genius first. No other girl in this school has a Muse except Dolly and I don’t mind it hawnting in our room because all it does is to keep the poetry stirred up in Dolly’s soul.

This is not a real letter for the post office or for you to read ever, but just scribble in the back of my composition book which cannot be dissybedient now the term is over all but fun and exes. Dolly down in the studyroom crams and crams till she daresent talk for fear of losing something out of her mind. I am writing this sortof letter just to keep myself out of crazyness while I wait alone in my room the long, long, long hours before you come. My imaginer can see you in the cars this minute. You seem to be looking out of the window and I wonder if you got little thinks of your Giovanna waiting here. On the seat by your side is some big package of my surprise for which you did not wish me to meet you at the train, but please I don’t need that surprise--just you! you! you! Since receiving your letter, the big school clock has ever ticked “Mother’s coming! Mother’s coming!” till I wrote it all round the edge of my music book when I never knew I did.

I want you to come so bad I can hardly live and yet--O Dearest, all the corners of my soul are full of scares. I stare in the mirror until Dolly tells I am getting vanity on myself, but it is my wonder, wonder what my looks and ways will be to you. I hope you do not forget how Dago black I am and have dizzypoint in me for that. And my manners--I have not worn them so long as the other girls--sometimes I lose them off when I am embearest or forget.

Let’s count me up together, Mother, now before you come. I’m bigger--that’s by the grace of God as the preacher says. I wear the clothes of grandeur--that’s by the grace of your love. I am a teeny smarter in my head--that’s by the grace of my teachers.

Spelling is still my ennemy. I don’t see why God made so many ways to spell words and then only put one way in the Dictionery which He must have written like the Bible and Encyclopedia since too big for any person to write in his long life.

Fractions are mean too and I hate them! What is the good to divide units in all those stingey parts which the denommynator shows how many and the numerator what you give each person? Fractions is how they used to cut the pie at the asylum on Saturday. If it wasn’t for fractions there would be no poors in this world for everybody would have good and plenty of all things. O Darlingest, there is no numerator and denommynator between you and me; you are my entire Mother instead of 1-90 of a matron I used to have.

And deffynitions are what Dolly calls my pon sassy norum which is Latin for the hardest ever. I could not remember moonshiner away from honeymoon till Dolly explained which one makes whisky on the still and which one is two going off alone after the wedding on a journey away from all encumbrants. They are still romantics and just hate to have anybody close except themselves, especially children big enough to be obzervant. Dolly learned that last outside of the book.

I was sure, Mother, I had scribbled away this whole hour and when I saw it to be only half gone, I shook my little watch and then kissed it to forgive me.

It is Commencement Week in this school and with me the same because I commence to live by your side. I wonder if I will ever acheeve the Senior kind to wear a graduated dress and make a grand bow (down, head, neck and chest; up chest, neck and head) to receive my dipploma tied with blue ribbon and you in the front row quite an old lady (though plenty young now) for all the grades and classes I must get promoted through. Dolly is a Freshy which is to be despized by Seniors, but anyway Freshies have class things like a yell, a color, and a spirit, while the grades have not and so are despized by Freshies the same.

Mother, so near, so near.... O O I believe there comes the maid to call me downstairs....

* * * * *

Sweet Mother dear did wait below, and I to talk with her did go, but acted like when I was young, they used to say “Cat’s got your tongue.”

O Muse, go way and let me alone! Can’t you see I’m too miserable to fool with poetry? Go and hawnt Dolly down in the study-room; only you’ll find she’s dreadfully busy cramming math and she won’t bother with you either; she’s got real troubles same as me--not the fancy poetical kind!

Please excuse me, Muse, to be so cross and rude, but it’s real aggervating of you when i’m just writing down my woe in this same old composition book and you change it into doggyrells which is all the kind you can unwind in me since I am no genius like my Dolly chum. I suppose it’s missing her makes you try to poetize me. Now be good and you may look over my shoulder though the Principal says for that not to be polite.

I shook some as I opened the reception room door and there was Mother, grander and wonderfuller than even my remembers. She met me on the first oriental rug and hugged me in her arms and kissed my cheeks and I was Heavenly happy.

But Odear! my orgins of speech wouldn’t act hardly at all. A teacher says we are full of orgins--not the music kind which would be nicer only I guess we wouldn’t stay in tune and then how bad we would sound up to God. Mother sat down and me too just like any other time to sit in a chair. O it was so funny and gloryous to have her close like that, it got me awful dazzled up and all I could talk was “Yes, Mother,” “No, Mother” like some silly doll when you pull its string. Why didn’t you come down stairs Muse, and hawnt some poetry into me--even that would have been better than “Yes, Mother,” “No, Mother” every minute.

My orgin of thought worked right along but of course Mother couldn’t hear it. When she asked was I in a hurry for my surprise I said outside “No, Mother,” but my think spoke “Before you came, Dearest, my soul was boiling over with hurry like a teakettle but by your side I got no hurry in the big world.”

Mother asked didn’t I wish I had a father and I answered “No, Mother” but my think exclaimed: “For the stupid I am, Mother Dear must take up any question she can, like some tackfull lady talking to a nidiot.” I felt so mortified I was almost some glad when she kissed me goodbye on the red rug in the hall. O all the night I dreamed and dreamed that first visit and the words we were going to speak, Mother to me and me to Mother! O dear! O dear! O dear!

Come hawnt me, O Muse, if you want to, for Mother Sweet was just sitting in that chair by the table right in this room, mine and Dolly’s. It is evening but it seemed as if the sun shone in all the windows at once!

Mother said “Here I am again, now don’t be so diffydent and sollum.”

My thinks hollered that I wouldn’t but “No, Mother,” was all I could speak and there I was the same chumpy nidiot of the afternoon.

Mother laughed. O Musie, her laugh rezembles Men--somebody’s “Spring Song” which Dolly ever plays on the piano for company, only Mother tinklies softer and more sweet.

Then she wanted to see my “Girl’s School Memory Book” and I sat close on my stool of putting on shoes to explain all with gladness, since its writings and pasteings were done for her precious eyes. I got my tongue back from the cat and talked and talked and talked--now, O Muse, what do you think of that?

When the book was finished, Mother meddytated to herself. By and by I put a little kiss to her hand and it fell on her rings, a diamond solitary and another unfancy, “Daughter,” she said, “I love those rings better than my fingers.” She meddytated some more while little watch on top of my heart ticked “Mother’s here! Mother’s here!”

Pretty soon she sortof waked herself up and said, “Giovanna, when you have a Mother and no father, you are still half of an orphan.”

I told her, “I don’t feel the least bit halffy, Mother, but so wrapped all round by your love there isn’t any chilly side to my soul!”

She spoke how splendid for me to own a father like Dolly and the other girls.

I answered: “No thank you, please, because a father would divide our loves and so bring fractions into our family, now a Heavenly unit of you and me.”

I remembered her asking me in the reception room about wanting a father and now I understood it was not just for tackfull but for really truly. All my time as her daughter it has been her angelical wish for me nevermore to see other girls with any pretty and me not.

I asked her, “If he is my father, mustn’t that make him your weddy husband?”

“Yes,” answered Mother, and blushed as any really lady must all times do when talk is about their husbands and they have none.

Then we meddytated some more and I thought how every man in the big world who sees Mother must wish he could have her for his weddy wife to sit forever by his side.

O Muse, I was afraid not to be respeckfull if I talked more to Mother on that blushy subject, but she asked me for my thinks so I spoke them out.

“Mother, he mightn’t suit you the leastest bit and perhaps you don’t care for husbands anyways so please don’t trouble yourself since you are to me plenty of parents.”

The Principal says there isn’t any joy like selfsacryfice and that is the true, for Mother’s face was just angel shiney with happiness to think of providing me to a father which she got to stand his long life as an old weddy husband always round in her way.

She just tinklied some more laugh and told me I could come tomorrow to her room at the hotel and receive my grand surprise. Then she went away. Goodnight, O Dolly’s Muse.

* * * * *

_Precious, Funny, Darling Mother_,

It seems like the night of day after tomorrow but it isn’t it’s the same evening tied right on to the same day of the afternoon I went to receive my surprise. O I must write all down here quick, quick or I will believe it to be just some perhaps I made up with myself and it isn’t--it’s the true--the great big wonderful gloryous true! This time I got to write it like a letter to you, Mother, as I so long have the habit and not to any Muse of slim air. Anyway Musie is busy this evening wispering a class song into Dolly.

In your room waited a big tall high bundle like no other in the whole world tied round and round with white paper and white ribbon.

I cried out was it a statyou to stand in my room and you said a little like that.

I asked was it a Pollo, god of handsome looks? You said better than a Pollo, and the bundle shook as if wind was blowing it. I pulled some paper off and there was cloth like a coat and I said I was glad for my statyou to not be cold and pitiful like the Pollo of the Museum seemed when I put my hand on him. That bundle shook more like mice running up and down inside the paper and I felt creepyfied but I pulled again and there was the real hand of a man.

I shreeked it was a burglar and ran away to you and shook and shook but you laughed and said “Goosey, would I bring you a burglar for a present?”

“O! O! O!” I screamed, “It’s my new father!” But I couldn’t pull any more paper off him for shakes, so he did himself and stood there, a big, grand, fine, dandy, shiverlrous gentleman! I said “Thank you, Mother for this nice father which is handsomer than Dolly’s or a Pollo but don’t make trouble to yourself just on account of me--does he suit you for a weddy husband?”

How you both laughed and ran together and hugged and laughed like anything and explained you were already married and having your honeymoons!

O and then my happiness got an awful bumpy ripple when I had quick remembers of Dolly explaining how honeymooners are romantic solitarys with their worst hate on children old enough to be obzervant.

I ran and looked out of the window and twinkled my eyes hard not to cry. I stared at a girl walking with a blue parrysol and I had awful jealous feelings to be just an old rag doll adoption out of an asylum and now not wanted by you any more. I had those feelings while that girl passed by seven lamp posts and then I saw what a mean, selfish, horrid, piggy thing I was, not to like you to be a romantic and have such happy looks on you as I never saw there before!

Then you and Daddy hugged me on both sides and asked what was my sadness and I was ashamed but must tell with all those coaxes and you both said this wasn’t any Dolly deffynition kind of honeymoon but you two wanted it all trimmed up with children. For that we are going next week to a cottage by the same lake where the orphans stay in a big camp with the money out of the kind old gentleman’s hat at Christmas. And Daddy says in its turn of ten at once every orphan gets a ride in his gassylean launch on the lake.

I can’t hardly believe yet that Isabella is to come for her vacation from the school where she was put by the will of her deadngone Bennyfactor and that Dolly is to visit for a month and my Italian cousins out of their tenement. Joy! joy! joy! joy!

O! O! O! and Daddy Dear took a dockument out of his pocket about you and him adopting me leegully for all my life! That dockument is my dipploma to be graduated out of the orphan school; only I made no down-head, up-chest bow but plenty of hugs to you and Daddy Dear instead.

O and he don’t bring fractions in our family and divide our loves as I was afraid! It was before he came we were fractionary but now complete. And my love for him is not cut off my love for you but is new by itself.

This is my last blank page, but I don’t need any more because now I’m all finished up like a once-on-a-time story in my green fairy book to “live happy ever after” with my adored parents. Amen! Amen! Amen!

Giovanna.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences were added. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. Misspelled words were not corrected.