"Sorensen, Virginia - Plain Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sorensen Virginia)

She knew he believed every word and was proud because he believed them.

"But why-" She paused, to be sure of what she meant to say. She looked up, puzzled, to ask it, with Mary in her thoughts. "Who are they, then? The others?
They wear different clothes nearly every day." Inside herself she was asking, "Who is Mary?"

His voice was still strong, but heavy too, like something boiled too thick. "They don't know who they are!" he said. "They are something different every
day! They are anything and everything, those people. They are like beans in a hat. They are nothing and nobody!"

Now he seemed very angry and it was almost as if she had shouted "Daniel! Daniel! Who is Daniel?" Or even "Who is Dan?" He got down and began to unharness
the horse with impatient hands. Esther saw Mother coming from the house to welcome her.

All evening she thought about what Father had said. It sounded sensible and true. Each living thing had its special color, and this never varied among its
kind except sometimes for the seasons. You were Red Squirrel, or you were Gray Squirrel. If Red you were quarrelsome and your meat was not sweet and good
and you drove Gray out of the trees and robbed him of his nuts. If you were a mouse instead you had another

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gray, smooth and flat, and a different tail without fuzz on it. If you were a woodcock you had still another gray, but had a bill for bug-digging added
onto the front of you and eyes that never blinked for fear of missing something important. Or dangerous.

Every one "after its own kind" as the Bible said God made them right at first.

But when she thought once more about herself, something was wrong again. Something was different with all those creatures and with people. Not until the
middle of the night did she see what the difference was. She woke suddenly with it quite clear in her mind. People were not different, like squirrels and
mice and woodcocks. Underneath their clothes they were all the same. She blushed to be thinking about such a thing, but it was true. So the difference
was that people made who they were with their wearing. For people, wearing this and that didn't come naturally at all, like fur and pinfeathers. They decided
for themselves who they would be. Even Adam and Eve had decided, had they not?

Father and Mother had decided. That was what he had meant. Plain People, with nothing fancy or bright to distract them. Dan had not made up his mind to
be Plain, and when they tried to make it up for him, he went away.

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And she herself. She must decide too. Sometime, not very long away, she must decide. Her mind swung to and fro, to and fro. Here were Father and Mother
and so many good kind ones who cared about everything she thought and did. But here was Mary, smiling on the other side. And curiously enough, beside Mary
stood Dan, tall and handsome as she remembered him.

She sat straight up in bed. Had Dan fallen in love, then? With somebody away, not Sarah? With somebody he could walk with in the town, and speak with even
before he turned his light into her window? The thought made such a great shivering that she drew the covers tight under her chin. With somebody in a pink
dress?

Now she recalled the row of small pink buttons down the back of Mary's dress.

If only she could see Dan now! Dan is the one to tell, she thought. I could ask Dan every question and he would answer. She was filled with loneliness for
him. How far away had he gone? If she searched and asked questions, could she find him? He had not taken his buggy or his horse, so he could not have gone
very far.

Shivering, she slipped out of bed and said her prayers all over again, from the beginning. But one prayer was different now. Usually she said, "Help Dan
to be all right wherever he is, and help him to come