I loathe Miss Bray.  The very sight of her shoulders in the back gets me mad all over without her saying a word, and everything in me that’s wrong comes right forward and speaks out when she and I are together.  She thinks she could run this earth better than it’s being done, and she walks like she was the Superintendent of most of it.  But I could stand that.  I could stand her cheeks, and her frizzed front, and a good many other things; but what I can’t stand is her passing for being truthful when she isn’t.  She tells stories, and she knows I know it; and from the day I found it out I have stayed out of her way; and were she the Queen of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the United States I’d want her to stand out of mine.  I truly would.

Her outrageousest story I heard her tell myself.  It was over a year ago, and we were in the room where the ladies were having a Board meeting.  I had come in to bring some water, and had a waiter full of glasses in my hands, and was just about to put them on the table when I heard Miss Bray tell her Lie.

That’s what she did.  She Lied!

Those glasses never touched that table.  My hands lost their hold, and down they came with a crash.  Every one smashed to smithereens, and I standing staring at Miss Bray.  The way she told her story was this.  The Board deals us out for adoption, and that morning they were discussing a request for Pinkie Moore, and, as usual, Miss Bray didn’t want Pinkie to go.  You see, Pinkie was very useful.  She did a lot of disagreeable things for Miss Bray, and Miss Bray didn’t want to lose her.  And when Mrs. Roane, who is the only Board lady truly seeing through her, asked, real sharplike, why Pinkie shouldn’t go this time, Miss Bray spoke out like she was really grieved.

“I declare, Mrs. Roane,” she said—­and she twirled her keys round and round her fingers, and twitched the nostril parts of her nose just like a horse—­“I declare, Mrs. Roane, I hate to tell you, I really do.  But Pinkie Moore wouldn’t do for adoption.  She has a terrible temper, and she’s so slow nobody would keep her.  And then, too”—­her voice was the Pharisee kind that the Lord must hate worse than all others—­“and then, too, I am sorry to say Pinkie is not truthful, and has been caught taking things from the girls.  I hope none of you will mention this, as I trust by watching over her to correct these faults.  She begs me so not to send her out for adoption, and is so devoted to me that—­” And just then she saw me, which she hadn’t done before, I being behind Mrs. Armstead, and she stopped like she had been hit.

For a minute I didn’t breathe.  I didn’t.  All I did was to stare—­stare with mouth open and eyes out; and then it was the glasses went down and I flew into the yard, and there by the pump was Pinkie.

“Oh, Pinkie!” I said.  “Oh, Pinkie!” And I caught her round the waist and raced up and down the yard like a wild man from Borneo.  “Oh, Pinkie, what do you think?” Poor Pinkie, thinking a mad dog had bit me, tried to make me stop, but stop I wouldn’t until there was no more breath.  And then we sat down on the woodpile, and I hugged her so hard I almost broke her bones.