每個月的第一個星期三真的都是糟糕透頂——一個在憂慮中等待，勇敢地忍耐后，忙一忙就又忘記的日子。每層地板都不可以有半點污漬，每張椅子都纖塵不染，每條床單都不可以有半條皺痕。97個動來動去的小孤兒都被梳洗妥當后，穿上剛熨得硬挺的格子衫，并且被一再囑咐要注意自己的禮貌。只要董事們一問話，就要說：“是的，先生。不是的，先生?！?
這真是個痛苦的時刻，可憐的喬若莎·亞伯特，身為最年長的孤兒，首當其沖需要承受這痛苦。
不過，這個特別的第一個星期三，跟往常一樣，終于也到了尾聲。喬若莎逃出了廚房，她剛在那里為訪客做了三明治，轉到樓上完成她每天的例行工作。她特別關心F號房，那兒有著4歲到7歲不等的11個小孩，房里11張小床排成一列。喬若莎把他們都叫來，把衣服拉直，鼻涕抹干凈后，就讓他們排成整齊快樂的一列往餐室前進，享受他們有牛奶、面包跟布丁的感恩的半小時。
喬若莎坐在窗臺上，太陽穴靠著冰冷的玻璃。從早晨5點起，她就忙個不停，執行每個人的命令，不時被神經兮兮的女監事臭罵、催促著。李皮太太在私底下可不是像她面對董事們跟來訪的女士時表現得那樣：冷靜并帶著自負的莊嚴。喬若莎往外望向枯草皮延展過去的那塊地，望向孤兒院的鐵籬笆外，望向波浪般綿延起伏的山脊，再望向禿樹間螺旋排列上升的村莊。
這天，據喬若莎所知，應該算是圓滿落幕了。董事們與參訪團已經繞過一巡，聽取簡報，喝過茶，現在正要趕回他們溫暖的爐火邊了，好忘記他們每個月麻煩的小義務。喬若莎傾身向前，好奇地看著，馬車與汽車的車流穿過孤兒院的大門，心里不禁充滿一陣渴望?；孟胫校惠v車子，回到坐落在山邊的大房子。她想象自己裹著一件貂皮大衣，戴著天鵝絨帽子，背靠在椅背上，淡淡地向司機說：“回家?！辈贿^一到她家門口，整個想象就變得模糊起來。
喬若莎有個幻想——李皮太太說要是不小心點，她便會惹上麻煩的幻想。盡管這幻想是這樣的深切，卻仍無法帶領她走進那扇她渴望進入的大門。貧窮、熱切又富有冒險心的喬若莎，在17年來，從未踏入一個普通的家庭。她無法想象，其他沒有孤兒干擾的人類的日常生活會是如何。
喬—若—莎·亞—伯—特
有人要—你
去辦公室，
我想
你最好動作快一點！
湯米·迪倫剛加入唱詩班，他越靠近F號房，歌聲就越大。喬若莎將自己從窗外拉回來，好面對生活里的麻煩事。
“是誰叫我？”她焦慮的聲音打斷了湯米的歌聲。
李皮太太在辦公室，
我覺得她好像火氣很大，
阿—門！
湯米很虔誠地吟誦著，不過他的腔調不完全是那么幸災樂禍。就算是這心腸最硬的小孤兒，對一個做錯事的姐姐被叫去要見那個討厭的女監事時，還是感到相當同情的。況且湯米挺喜歡喬若莎的，雖然她有時候太用力地拉他，而且快把他的鼻子給擦掉了！
喬若莎二話不說就去了，不過腦子閃過一些念頭，會是哪里出狀況了？是三明治切得不夠??？還是有蛋殼掉在杏仁蛋糕里？是哪個來訪的女士看到蘇西·華生襪子上的破洞？還是——哎，糟糕！——哪個F號房里的天真的小寶貝把調味醬打翻在董事身上？
又長又低矮的大廳已經關了燈，當喬若莎下樓時，最后一個董事站在那兒，正要離開。在通往門廊的門邊，她只看了一眼這個人，感覺他好高好高。他正朝彎道上等的一輛車揮手，當它靠近時，大燈把他的影子投在里面的墻上，影子把手腳顯得很長。他看起來真像個超大號搖來晃去的長腿叔叔。
喬若莎緊鎖的眉頭很快地舒展開了，她輕松地笑了笑。她是個天性樂觀的人，一有機會就不忘放松一下。假如能化壓迫為娛樂，這樣也算是件好事吧。因為這段小插曲，讓她在進辦公室去見李皮太太時，臉上還掛著一絲笑意。令人驚訝的是，女監事也在對她笑，就算不是真的在笑，至少也還算和藹。她表現得就像她在接待訪客一樣愉悅。
“喬若莎，坐下，我有些話要跟你說。”喬若莎跌坐到最近的一張椅子里，屏息以待。汽車的大燈照過窗戶，李皮太太望著它。
“你注意到剛走的那位先生了嗎？”
“我看到了他的背影?！?
“他是我們最富有的董事之一，也捐了很多錢幫助我們。我不能說他的名字，他很明確地要求我們不要透露他的姓名。”
喬若莎的雙眼慢慢張大了，她不太習慣被女監事叫來辦公室，討論董事們的怪癖。
“這位先生已經對好幾個男孩子關照過。你記得查理·班頓跟亨利·傅理茲吧？他們都被這位——呃——先生——這位董事，送到大學去讀書，并以辛勤的工作與努力賺錢來回報他慷慨花的錢。他從不要求其他的回報。到目前為止，他的仁慈僅限于對男孩子。我從未能讓他對本機構的女孩們產生一丁點兒興趣，不論是多么優秀的。我可以這樣說，他一點兒也不在乎女孩子。”
“是的，女士?！眴倘羯鸬溃丝趟坪鯌撘瘘c什么。
“今天的例會里，你的未來被提出來討論了?！?
李皮太太在此停頓了一會兒，然后以一種緩慢而安靜的語調說下去，讓她的聽眾感到神經緊繃，非常痛苦。
“通常，你知道的，孩子們過了16歲就不能留下來了，不過你算是個特例。你14歲就從中學畢業了，而且表現良好——我必須說，也沒有一直都很好啦。由于你的表現，我們就決定讓你繼續讀高中。現在你也畢業了，我們不能再負擔你的生活了。就這樣，你已經比其他人多享受了兩年。”
李皮太太無視于喬若莎這兩年為了她的食宿，已經工作得很賣力了。永遠都是把孤兒院排第一，功課排第二。像今天這種日子她就得留在孤兒院來幫忙。
“就像我剛才說的，你的未來跟你的記錄被提出來討論——徹徹底底地討論了一番?！?
李皮太太用一種指責的眼光盯著喬若莎，而喬若莎表現出一副罪惡感的樣子，不是因為她真的記得做過什么壞事，而是她好像應該就要這樣。
“當然啦，對你來說，應該討論你該去哪兒工作好，不過你在學校里，某些科目表現得很突出，你的英文寫作表現得很好。你們學校的董事普里查小姐正好在參訪團里。她跟你的作文老師談過，為你說了一番好話。她也朗讀了你的一篇作文——名叫《憂郁的星期三》。”
喬若莎這時的負罪感，絕不是裝出來的了。
“聽起來，你嘲笑這個把你養大，為你做了這么多的孤兒院，沒有表示出一點兒感激，我不知道你是不是有意嘲弄，我也不知道你會不會被原諒。不過，幸虧先生——就是剛走的那位，顯得很有幽默感。就因為那篇不中肯的文章，他愿意讓你去念大學?！?
“去念大學？”喬若莎睜大眼睛。李皮太太點了點頭。
“他跟我談了確切的時間。董事們都很奇怪。這位先生，我敢這么說，更是古怪。他相信你有天分，他希望把你塑造成一個作家?！?
“作家？”喬若莎都蒙了，只能呆呆地重復李皮太太說的話。
“那只是他的希望。不管會變成怎樣，以后自然會知道。他會給你足夠的零用錢，對一個從沒理過財的女孩子來說，真是太大方了。不過這些瑣事他都打理好了，不容我插手。你這個夏天都會留在這里，好心的普查德小姐會負責替你打理所有的行李。你的食宿費與學費都會直接付給學校，在那兒的4年里，你每個月還有35元的零用錢。這讓你可以跟其他學生平起平坐。這些錢每個月都會由這位先生的私人秘書寄給你，相應地，你每個月也要回封信表示一下。他并不是要你為零用錢向他道謝，他并不在意這個，不過你要寫信告訴他求學的過程跟生活的細節，就像寫給你的父母一樣，如果他們還在世的話?！?
“這些信的收信人寫約翰·史密斯先生，這樣就會送到他秘書的手上了。這位先生的名字當然不是約翰·史密斯，不過他希望當個無名氏。對你而言，他將只是約翰·史密斯先生。他要求你寫信的原因是他認為沒有什么比寫信更能培養寫作技巧。由于你沒有家人可聯絡，他才希望你寫這樣的信給他，另一方面他也想隨時知道你的學習狀況。他絕不會回你的信，也不會特別注意這些信。他很討厭寫信，也不想你變成他的負擔。如果有任何緊急事件需要回復——比如你要被退學啦，我相信這應該不會發生——你可以跟他的秘書格利茲先生聯絡。每個月寫信是你絕對要遵守的義務，這也是這位先生唯一的要求，所以你一定要一絲不茍地寫信，就當作你在付賬單一樣。我希望這些信都是以尊敬的語氣來寫的，并且要表現出你的寫作天賦來。你一定要記得你是在寫信給約翰·格利爾之家的某位董事。”
喬若莎的眼睛熱切地往門口張望。她的腦子興奮得亂成一團，她只想快點從老生常談的李皮太太身邊逃開，好好來思考一下。她站起來，嘗試著向后退了一步。
李皮太太做了個手勢要她留下，這是不容錯過的演講的大好機會。
“我相信你一定很珍惜這個從天而降的好運是吧，世上沒有幾個像你這種出身的女孩子能遇到這種好運。你一定要記得——”
“我會的，女士。謝謝您。我想如果沒其他事的話，我得去幫弗萊迪·柏金斯的褲子補補丁了?！?
喬若莎關起門，李皮太太盯著門板，下巴都快掉下來了，她的演講被迫中斷了。
Blue Wednesday
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day-a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste. Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed without a wrinkle.Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams;and all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say,"Yes, sir,""No, sir,"whenever a trustee spoke.
It was a distressing time;and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest orphan, had to bear the brunt of it.
But this particular first Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close. Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs to accomplish her regular work.Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots, from four to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row.Jerusha assembled her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly and willing line towards the dining-room to engage themselves for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune pudding.
Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that morning, doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron.Mrs.Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees and lady visitors.Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.
The day was ended-quite successfully, so far as she knew. The Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying home to their own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome little charges for another month.Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity-and a touch of wistfulness-the stream of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates.In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside.She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring"Home"to the driver.But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.
Jerusha had an imagination-an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her, that would get her into trouble if she didn't take care-but keen as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the houses she would enter.Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha, in all her seventeen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house;she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings who carried on their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fce,
And I think you'd
Better hurry up!
Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of life.
"Who wants me?"she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
Mrs. Lippett in the offce,
And I think she's mad.
Ah-a-men!
Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious. Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron;and Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub his nose off.
Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow. What could have gone wrong, she wondered.Were the sandwiches not thin enough?Were there shells in the nut cakes?Had a lady visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking?Had-O horrors!-one of the cherubic little babes in her own room F"sauced"a Trustee?
The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of the man-and the impression consisted entirely of tallness.He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive.As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along the floor and up the wall of the corridor.It looked, for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused.If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and presented a smiling face to Mrs.Lippett.To her surprise the matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable;she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for visitors.
"Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you."Jerusha dropped into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness. An automobile flashed past the window;Mrs.Lippett glanced after it.
"Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?"
"I saw his back."
"He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums of money towards the asylum's support. I am not at liberty to mention his name;he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown."
Jerusha's eyes widened slightly;she was not accustomed to being summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees with the matron.
"This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys. You remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize?They were both sent through college by Mr.-er-this Trustee, and both have repaid with hard work and success the money that was so generously expended.Other payment the gentleman does not wish.Heretofore his philanthropies have been directed solely towards the boys;I have never been able to interest him in the slightest degree in any of the girls in the institution, no matter how deserving.He does not, I may tell you, care for girls."
"No, ma'am,"Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected at this point.
"Today at the regular meeting, the question of your future was brought up."
Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed in a slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer's suddenly tightened nerves.
"Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are sixteen, but an exception was made in your case. You had finished our school at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies-not always, I must say, in your conduct-it was determined to let you go on in the village high school.Now you are finishing that, and of course the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support.As it is, you have had two years more than most."
Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard for her board during those two years, that the convenience of the asylum had come first and her education second;that on days like the present she was kept at home to scrub.
"As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your record was discussed-thoroughly discussed."
Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the dock, and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be expected-not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in her record.
"Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to put you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have done well in school in certain branches;it seems that your work in English has even been brilliant. Miss Pritchard, who is on our visiting committee, is also on the school board;she has been talking with your rhetoric teacher, and made a speech in your favour.She also read aloud an essay that you had written entitled,‘Blue Wednesday'."
Jerusha's guilty expression this time was not assumed.
"It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven.But fortunately for you, Mr.-,that is, the gentleman who has just gone-appears to have an immoderate sense of humour.On the strength of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send you to college."
"To college?"Jerusha's eyes grew big. Mrs.Lippett nodded.
"He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual.The gentleman, I may say, is erratic.He believes that you have originality, and he is planning to educate you to become a writer."
"A writer?"Jerusha's mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs.Lippett's words.
"That is his wish. Whether anything will come of it, the future will show.He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal.But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to make any suggestions.You are to remain here through the summer, and Miss Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your outfit.Your board and tuition will be paid directly to the college, and you will receive in addition during the four years you are there, an allowance of thirty-five dollars a month.This will enable you to enter on the same standing as the other students.The money will be sent to you by the gentleman's private secretary once a month, and in return, you will write a letter of acknowledgment once a month.That is-you are not to thank him for the money;he doesn't care to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if they were living.
"These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent in care of the secretary.The gentleman's name is not John Smith, but he prefers to remain unknown.To you he will never be anything but John Smith.His reason in requiring the letters is that he thinks nothing so fosters facility in literary expression as letter-writing.Since you have no family with whom to correspond, he desires you to write in this way;also, he wishes to keep track of your progress.He will never answer your letters, nor in the slightest particular take any notice of them.He detests letter-writing and does not wish you to become a burden.If any point should ever arise where an answer would seem to be imperative-such as in the event of your being expelled, which I trust will not occur-you may correspond with Mr.Griggs, his secretary.These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory on your part;they are the only payment that Mr.Smith requires, so you must be as punctilious in sending them as though it were a bill that you were paying.I hope that they will always be respectful in tone and will reflect credit on your training.You must remember that you are writing to a Trustee of the John Grier Home."
Jerusha's eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl of excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs.Lippett's platitudes and think.She rose and took a tentative step backwards.Mrs.Lippett detained her with a gesture;it was an oratorical opportunity not to be slighted.
"I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good fortune that has befallen you?Not many girls in your position ever have such an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always remember-"
"I-yes, ma'am, thank you. I think, if that's all, I must go and sew a patch on Freddie Perkins's trousers."
The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped jaw, her peroration in mid-air.