"Not sick enough to hurt, or to keep me from the Mowrys the next night.
The Mowrys didn't have but four kinds of bread and three kinds of cake
and two kinds of meats and some other things, but you couldn't see a
piece of Mrs. Milligan's table-cloth as big as a salt-cellar, it was so
full of food. I took some of everything on the table. Mr. Milligan kept
handing me things from his end and Mrs. Milligan from her end, and the
little Milligans from the sides, and we laughed so much and I tried so
hard to eat I got really excited about it, and of course I was sick the
next day. But it didn't matter. We had a beautiful time, and I learned
things I never knew before."

She dropped on her knees by the older woman and crossed her arms on
her lap. "When I was a little girl, Miss Gibbie, and lived here in the
asylum, I used to wish I was a fairy or a witch or a wizard, or
something that could make great changes, could turn things round and
upside down; could put poor people where were rich, put sad ones where
were happy, put the lowly where were the high, and see what they would
do. And in the years I have been away, almost ten years, I have been
thinking and watching and wondering if half the trouble in the world is
not from misunderstanding, from not knowing each other better. And how
can we know if each stays in his own little world, never touches the
other's life?" She laughed, nodding her head. "I wouldn't discuss
Flaubert with Mr. Milligan or Greek Art with Mr. Chinn, but they can
tell me a good deal about Yorkburg's needs; and, after all, a person's
heart is more important than his head. We are educating people at a
terrible rate, but what are we going to do about it if we're not friends
when we're through? Of course you can't see my way. You hate dirty
people to come near you, but how get them clean if we keep from them?"

Miss Gibbie took up her fan and used it as if already the atmosphere