“She got up then an’ went out of the room so quiet an’ still you wouldn’t know she was movin’.  But I heard her up in her room cryin’ half an hour later, when I stopped a minute at her door to see if she was there.  An’ she was.

“But she wasn’t cryin’ by night.  Not much she was!  She’d washed her face an’ dressed herself up as pretty as could be, an’ she never so much as looked as if she wanted her husband to stay with her, when he said right after supper that he guessed he’d go out to the observatory.  An’ ’t was that way right along after that.  I know, ’cause I watched.  You see, I knew what she’d said she’d do.  Well, she did it.

“Then, pretty quick after that, she began to get acquainted in the town.  Folks called, an’ there was parties an’ receptions where she met folks, an’ they began to come here to the house, ’specially them students, an’ two or three of them young, unmarried professors.  An’ she began to go out a lot with them—­skatin’ an’ sleigh-ridin’ an’ snowshoein’.

“Like it?  Of course she liked it!  Who wouldn’t?  Why, child, you never saw such a fuss as they made over your ma in them days.  She was all the rage; an’ of course she liked it.  What woman wouldn’t, that was gay an’ lively an’ young, an’ had been so lonesome like your ma had?  But some other folks didn’t like it.  An’ your pa was one of them.  This time ’t was him that made the trouble.  I know, ’cause I heard what he said one day to her in the library.

“Yes, I guess I was in the next room that day, too—­er—­dustin’, probably.  Anyway, I heard him tell your ma good an’ plain what he thought of her gallivantin’ ‘round from mornin’ till night with them young students an’ professors, an’ havin’ them here, too, such a lot, till the house was fairly overrun with them.  He said he was shocked an’ scandalized, an’ didn’t she have any regard for his honor an’ decency, if she didn’t for herself!  An’, oh, a whole lot more.

“Cry?  No, your ma didn’t cry this time.  I met her in the hall right after they got through talkin’, an’ she was white as a sheet, an’ her eyes was like two blazin’ stars.  So I know how she must have looked while she was in the library.  An’ I must say she give it to him good an’ plain, straight from the shoulder.  She told him she was shocked an’ scandalized that he could talk to his wife like that; an’ didn’t he have any more regard for her honor and decency than to accuse her of runnin’ after any man living—­much less a dozen of them!  An’ then she told him a lot of what his mother had said to her, an’ she said she had been merely tryin’ to carry out those instructions.  She was tryin’ to make her husband and her husband’s wife an’ her husband’s home popular with the college folks, so she could help him to be president, if he wanted to be.  But he answered back, cold an’ chilly, that he thanked her, of course, but he didn’t care for any more of that kind of assistance; an’ if she would give a little more time to her home an’ her housekeepin’, as she ought to, he would be considerably better pleased.  An’ she said, very well, she would see that he had no further cause to complain.  An’ the next minute I met her in the hall, as I just said, her head high an’ her eyes blazin’.