It was after that that she began to stay in her room so much, and not take me anywhere except for walks at the other end of the town where it was all quiet and stupid, and no music or lights, or anything.  And though I teased and teased to go back to the pretty, jolly places, she wouldn’t ever take me; not once.

Then by and by, one day, we met a little black-haired woman with white cheeks and very big sad eyes.  There weren’t any spangly dresses and gold slippers about her, I can tell you!  She was crying on a bench in the park, and Mother told me to stay back and watch the swans while she went up and spoke to her. (Why do old folks always make us watch swans or read books or look into store windows or run and play all the time?  Don’t they suppose we understand perfectly well what it means—­that they’re going to say something they don’t want us to hear?) Well, Mother and the lady on the bench talked and talked ever so long, and then Mother called me up, and the lady cried a little over me, and said, “Now, perhaps, if I’d had a little girl like that—!” Then she stopped and cried some more.

We saw this lady real often after that.  She was nice and pretty and sweet, and I liked her; but she was always awfully sad, and I don’t believe it was half so good for Mother to be with her as it would have been for her to be with those jolly, laughing ladies that were always having such good times.  But I couldn’t make Mother see it that way at all.  There are times when it seems as if Mother just couldn’t see things the way I do.  Honestly, it seems sometimes almost as if she was the cross-current and contradiction instead of me.  It does.

Well, as I said before, I didn’t like it very well out there, and I don’t believe Mother did, either.  But it’s all over now, and we’re back home packing up to go to Boston.

Everything seems awfully queer.  Maybe because Father isn’t here, for one thing.  He wrote very polite and asked us to come to get our things, and he said he was going to New York on business for several days, so Mother need not fear he should annoy her with his presence.  Then, another thing, Mother’s queer.  This morning she was singing away at the top of her voice and running all over the house picking up things she wanted; and seemed so happy.  But this afternoon I found her down on the floor in the library crying as if her heart would break with her head in Father’s big chair before the fireplace.  But she jumped up the minute I came in and said, no, no, she didn’t want anything.  She was just tired; that’s all.  And when I asked her if she was sorry, after all, that she was going to Boston to live, she said, no, no, no, indeed, she guessed she wasn’t.  She was just as glad as glad could be that she was going, only she wished Monday would hurry up and come so we could be gone.

And that’s all.  It’s Saturday now, and we go just day after to-morrow.  Our trunks are ’most packed, and Mother says she wishes she’d planned to go to-day.  I’ve said good-bye to all the girls, and promised to write loads of letters about Boston and everything.  They are almost as excited as I am; and I’ve promised, “cross my heart and hope to die,” that I won’t love those Boston girls better than I do them—­specially Carrie Heywood, of course, my dearest friend.