“Oh, Father!” I cried, “couldn’t you come courting her again—­calls and flowers and candy, and all the rest?  Oh, Father, couldn’t you?  Why, Father, of course, you could!”

This last I added in my most persuasive voice, for I could see the “no” on his face even before he began to shake his head.

“I’m afraid not, my dear,” he said then.  “It would take more than a flower or a bonbon to to win your mother back now, I fear.”

“But you could try,” I urged.

He shook his head again.

“She wouldn’t see me—­if I called, my dear,” he answered.

He sighed as he said it, and I sighed, too.  And for a minute I didn’t say anything.  Of course, if she wouldn’t see him—­

Then another idea came to me.

“But, Father, if she would see you—­I mean, if you got a chance, you would tell her what you told me just now; about—­about its being your fault, I mean, and the spirit of youth beating against the bars, and all that.  You would, wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, not anything, for such a long time I thought he hadn’t heard me.  Then, with a queer, quick drawing-in of his breath, he said: 

“I think—­little girl—­if—­if I ever got the chance I would say—­a great deal more than I said to you to-night.”

“Good!” I just crowed the word, and I think I clapped my hands; but right away I straightened up and was very fine and dignified, for I saw Aunt Hattie looking at me from across the room, as I said: 

“Very good, then.  You shall have the chance.”

He turned and smiled a little, but he shook his head.

“Thank you, child; but I don’t think you know quite what you’re promising,” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

Then I told him my idea.  At first he said no, and it couldn’t be, and he was very sure she wouldn’t see him, even if he called.  But I said she would if he would do exactly as I said.  And I told him my plan.  And after a time and quite a lot of talk, he said he would agree to it.

And this morning we did it.

At exactly ten o’clock he came up the steps of the house here, but he didn’t ring the bell.  I had told him not to do that, and I was on the watch for him.  I knew that at ten o’clock Grandfather would be gone, Aunt Hattie probably downtown shopping, and Lester out with his governess.  I wasn’t so sure of Mother, but I knew it was Saturday, and I believed I could manage somehow to keep her here with me, so that everything would be all right there.

And I did.  I had a hard time, though.  Seems as if she proposed everything to do this morning—­shopping, and a walk, and a call on a girl I knew who was sick.  But I said I did not feel like doing anything but just to stay at home and rest quietly with her. (Which was the truth—­I didn’t feel like doing anything else!) But that almost made matters worse than ever, for she said that was so totally unlike me that she was afraid I must be sick; and I had all I could do to keep her from calling a doctor.