Far From Home by Nellie P. Strowbridge Page A

all be sorry when she died. They would write poems about her and think of her with a measure of charity. If she could do it, they would hear her crutches thumping through the hall at night as payment for all the mean things they had said and done to her. Her ghost would knock them over the head with the crutches and they would sit up in bed sniffling. Cora and Treffie were the only children she wouldn’t scare.
    When she passed the office after breakfast, Missus Frances was standing in the doorway looking in her direction. She crooked a finger, the signal for Clarissa to follow her inside. “If I’m going to die, let it be now,” Clarissa prayed, looking up as she made her way to a chair. She sat down and faced Missus Frances across the desk.
    â€œClarissa,” the mistress began, giving her a serious look, “Housemother Simmons reports that when she went to change the beds in your dormitory, your sheets were stained.”
    Clarissa looked back at the mistress. Then she let her eyelids drop to hide the guilt she felt. She had hugged her insides in and had stopped picking piss-a-beds after she’d heard they made children wet their beds, and now something even more horrible had happened to her. The red dwarf she had read about in a library book The Norseman’s Tale must have put a curse on her. It was likely his box she and Cora had discovered on Tea House Hill.
    â€œYou might not understand this now,” the mistress said, “but you have two places inside your body that hold eggs.”
    â€œEggs!” Clarissa’s eyes widened. Her chin shot up. “Like a hen!” She swallowed, wondering how many eggs were sitting inside her, and why none of them had broken before – considering all the times she had fallen down. She’d have to be careful from now on, so they wouldn’t burst again and run out of her, yellow and snotty-white – or bloody.
    â€œWhat happens to the shells?” Clarissa asked in an uncomfortable voice.
    â€œWe are speaking of humans now, not hens,” Missus Frances said sternly. A pink flush moved up the mistress’s face. “Every month from now on, the eggs will break and there will be blood for a few days. When you get married, the eggs left inside you will turn into babies.” The mistress pushed back her chair and stood up, instructing Clarissa to stay put until she came back.
    Clarissa waited on the large wooden chair, her arms tight against her body. “I will never be the same again,” she murmured. “Something much worse than wetting the bed has happened, something worse than dying.” But then she began to think about it. If this had happened to her, it must have happened to the prim and proper Missus Frances. And it would happen to the other girls in her room. What a surprise they were going to get; she could hardly wait. She felt a laugh bubble up. Her lips were ready to burst apart in a wide smile when she saw Missus Frances coming back. She was holding out white flannelette napkins. “You are to pin these inside your bloomers, and change them as often as is necessary. Make sure you wash yourself down there after every change,” she said in a tight voice. “You will find clean undergarments on your bed.” She placed some silver pins in the pocket of Clarissa’s gimp. “Now you will move up to the next floor to be with the other girls who are growing into women.”
    â€œOh no!” Clarissa cried in dismay. “Another set of stairs to climb.”
    â€œExercise,” said Missus Frances, “is always good for the limbs. Ilish will bring you your belongings later.”
    Clarissa knew Cora would be a true friend and bring up her treasure bag of secret things which was hidden under the mattress in her old room. She especially wanted her blue handkerchief and the piece of bark with her wish to go home written in it.
    â€œIf you have stomach cramps, rest until