“Oh, that’s nothing, child that’s nothing,” said Sal.  “It will return to you gradually.  Why, things that happened forty years ago and were forgotten twenty years ago come back to me every day, but then I always did forget more in one night than some people, Miss Grundy, for instance, ever knew in all their life.”

“Have you lived here long?” asked Mary.

“Yes, a great while,” and the expression of Sally’s face grew graver, as she added, “Perhaps you don’t know that I lost little Willie, and then Willie’s father died too, and left me all alone.  Their graves are away on the great western prairies, beneath the buckeye trees, and one night when the winter wind was howling fearfully, I fancied I heard little Willie’s voice calling to me from out the raging storm.  So I lay down on the turf above my lost darling, and slept so long, that when I awoke my hair had all turned gray and I was in Chicopee, where Willie’s father used to live.  After a while they brought me here and said I was crazy, but I wasn’t.  My head was clear as a bell, and I knew as much as I ever did, only I couldn’t tell it, because, you see, the right words wouldn’t come.  But I don’t care now I’ve found some one who knows grammar.  How many genders are there, child?”

“Four,” answered Mary, who had been studying Smith.

Instantly Sal seized Mary’s hands, and nearly wrenching them off in her joy, capered and danced about the room, leaping over the cradle, and finally exclaiming, “Capital!  You think just as I do, don’t you?  And have the same opinion of her?  What are the genders, dear?  Repeat them”

“Masculine, Feminine, Neuter and Common,” said Mary

“O, get out with your common gender,” screamed Sal. “My grammar don’t read so.  It says Masculine, Feminine Neuter and Grundy gender, to which last but one thing in the world belongs, and that is the lady below with the cast iron back and India-rubber tongue.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Grundy?” asked Mary, and Sal replied, “Mrs. Grundy? and who may Mrs. Grundy be?  Oh, I understand, she’s been stuffing you.”

“Been what?” said Mary.

“Excuse me,” answered Sal.  “That’s a slang term I’ve picked up since I’ve been here.  It’s so easy to get contaminated, when one is constantly associated with such low people.  I mean that during my temporary seclusion Miss Grundy has probably given you erroneous impressions which I take pleasure in correcting.  She has no more right to order us boarders around, and say when we shall breathe and when we shan’t, than I have.  She’s nothing more nor less than a town pauper herself, and has to work at that.”

“So do we all,” interrupted Mary, and Sal continued.  “On that point you are slightly mistaken, my dear.  I don’t have to.  I didn’t come here to work.  They tried it once.”