And that’s the way it is with them all the time.  They’re too funny and lovely together for anything. (Aunt Hattie says they’re too silly for anything; but nobody minds Aunt Hattie.) They just can’t seem to do enough for each other.  Father was going next week to a place ’way on the other side of the world to view an eclipse of the moon, but he said right off he’d give it up.  But Mother said, “No, indeed,” she guessed he wouldn’t give it up; that he was going, and that she was going, too—­a wedding trip; and that she was sure she didn’t know a better place to go for a wedding trip than the moon!  And Father was so pleased.  And he said he’d try not to pay all his attention to the stars this time; and Mother laughed and said, “Nonsense,” and that she adored stars herself, and that he must pay attention to the stars.  It was his business to.  Then she looked very wise and got off something she’d read in the astronomy book.  And they both laughed, and looked over to me to see if I was noticing.  And I was.  And so then we all laughed.

And, as I said before, it is all perfectly lovely and wonderful.

So it’s all settled, and they’re going right away on this trip and call it a wedding trip.  And, of course, Grandfather had to get off his joke about how he thought it was a pretty dangerous business; and to see that this honeymoon didn’t go into an eclipse while they were watching the other one.  But nobody minds Grandfather.

I’m to stay here and finish school.  Then, in the spring, when Father and Mother come back, we are all to go to Andersonville and begin to live in the old house again.

Won’t it be lovely?  It just seems too good to be true.  Why, I don’t care a bit now whether I’m Mary or Marie.  But, then, nobody else does, either.  In fact, both of them call me the whole name now, Mary Marie.  I don’t think they ever said they would.  They just began to do it.  That’s all.

Of course, anybody can see why:  now each one is calling me the other one’s name along with their own.  That is, Mother is calling me Mary along with her pet Marie, and Father is calling me Marie along with his pet Mary.

Funny, isn’t it?

But one thing is sure, anyway.  How about this being a love story now?  Oh, I’m so excited!

CHAPTER IX

WHICH IS THE TEST

ANDERSONVILLE. Twelve years later.

Twelve years—­yes.  And I’m twenty-eight years old.  Pretty old, little Mary Marie of the long ago would think.  And, well, perhaps to-day I feel just as old as she would put it.

I came up into the attic this morning to pack away some things I shall no longer need, now that I am going to leave Jerry. (Jerry is my husband.) And in the bottom of my little trunk I found this manuscript.  I had forgotten that such a thing existed; but with its laboriously written pages before me, it all came back to me; and I began to read; here a sentence; there a paragraph; somewhere else a page.  Then, with a little half laugh and half sob, I carried it to an old rocking-chair by the cobwebby dormer window, and settled myself to read it straight through.