I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub , would n't you ? I 'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow , I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her -- because she did n't live very long after that , you see . She died of fever when I was just three months old . I do wish she 'd lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother . I think it would be so sweet to say ` mother , ' do n't you ? And father died four days afterwards from fever too . That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits ' end , so Mrs. Thomas said , what to do with me . You see , nobody wanted me even then . It seems to be my fate . Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well known they had n't any relatives living . Finally Mrs. Thomas said she 'd take me , though she was poor and had a drunken husband . She brought me up by hand . Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people ? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand -- reproachful-like . `` Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville , and I lived with them until I was eight years old . I helped look after the Thomas children -- there were four of them younger than me -- and I can tell you they took a lot of looking after . Then Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children , but she did n't want me . Mrs. Thomas was at HER wits ' end , so she said , what to do with me . Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came down and said she 'd take me , seeing I was handy with children , and I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps . It was a very lonesome place .
I 'm sure I could never have lived there XXXXX I had n't had an imagination .
at because by for if than though to under with