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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"I am going to ask my friend Ace to take us," Mary announces.

"She has a machine that shall take us there - next I see her I will ask. I do not think she will say no, seeing as it is so important."

She considers. "Also there is Goldilocks - she wished to see India. So," she adds, generously, "I said she might come if she liked. Since she has not been."

"......Is she not in a book?" he asks carefully.

"Yes."

Mary's face dares him to challenge that.

"Does Martha know you're associating with fictional characters, Mary?"

He's mostly just curious.

"I am sure," Mary says, a little primly, "that Martha associates with fictional characters there as well.

Besides," she adds, loftily, "it is not up to Martha the people with whom I choose to associate. I may associate with whomever I choose. If it were up to them I should not be associating with you."

"I did not say it was," he replies crankily, "only asked if she knows."

"I know a good many people," Mary says, with the faintest hint of pride.

Mary's never been able to say that before, after all.

"Martha does notknow everybody that I know."

"Are most of them very boring?"

Colin vaguely suspects the majority of people are.

"Many of them are very interesting," Mary retorts, primly; then, a little warily: "Did you think the people you have met were boring?"

"No," he says, considering.

"I liked Susannah. She has very pretty skin."

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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