mistressmaryquitecontrary

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The knock on Colin's door is loud and ominous.

- that doesn't matter much, however, as Mary marches in immediately after knocking and folds her hands neatly over her lap.

"Good morning, Colin."

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Mary frowns, a little; not in disapproval, but in thought.

"I do not know Susannah," she decides, finally. "What is it that makes her skin so pretty?"

"It looks like chocolate."

"- oh, you only mean she is a native," Mary says, a trifle dismissively.

She had thought it might be something interesting, like velvet or plaid skin.

"Is that it?" He is a little surprised.

"She is still very pretty. Prettier than you." He thought natives would be, well. Not like people. "She did not sound like a native." He has asked.

Perhaps he did not understand the answer.

"Well, I am plain," Mary reminds him, matter-of-factly. "So it is not hard.

And not all natives sound alike - there are many of them that speak different dialects."

With some smugness: "I know how to say things in several."

"That is not," loftily, "what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Mary demands, looking a trifle cross.

Mary thinks people should say what they mean.

"I asked if she was a native."

"And what did she say?"

"That everyone is a native to somewhere."

Mary considers this.

"That is true," she says, finally, "but it is also not answering the question.

- besides, it is not always true. I am not native to India nor England; I am not native to anywhere."

"No. It is not."

He considers as well.

"Perhaps you can become native."

"I do not think you can become a native of anything," Mary says, and shrugs, a little.

"Native means you have to be born so - as you are born a girl or a boy."

"I have become well. A little. I thought that was something you had to be born to." He is not certain.

"Lots of people become well and ill and all different things," Mary protests. "I was not so very well 'till I came here - and your mother was well, and then became ill - and both my parents were well, until they caught the cholera, and then they were not."

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