Well, what was I saying?  Oh, I know—­about asking questions.  As I said, there isn’t anybody like Nurse Sarah here.  I can’t understand Olga, and Theresa, the other maid, is just about as bad.  Aunt Hattie’s lovely, but I can’t ask questions of her.  She isn’t the kind.  Besides, Lester’s always there, too; and you can’t discuss family affairs before children.  Of course there’s Mother and Grandpa Desmond.  But questions like when it’s proper for Mother to have lovers I can’t ask of them, of course.  So there’s no one but Peter left to ask.  Peter’s all right and very nice, but he doesn’t seem to know anything that I want to know.  So he doesn’t amount to so very much, after all.

I’m not sure, anyway, that Mother’ll want to get married again.  From little things she says I rather guess she doesn’t think much of marriage, anyway.  One day I heard her say to Aunt Hattie that it was a very pretty theory that marriages were made in heaven, but that the real facts of the case were that they were made on earth.  And another day I heard her say that one trouble with marriage was that the husband and wife didn’t know how to play together and to rest together.  And lots of times I’ve heard her say little things to Aunt Hattie that showed how unhappy her marriage had been.

But last night a funny thing happened.  We were all in the library reading after dinner, and Grandpa looked up from his paper and said something about a woman that was sentenced to be hanged and how a whole lot of men were writing letters protesting against having a woman hanged; but there were only one or two letters from women.  And Grandpa said that only went to prove how much more lacking in a sense of fitness of things women were than men.  And he was just going to say more when Aunt Hattie bristled up and tossed her chin, and said, real indignantly: 

“A sense of fitness of things, indeed!  Oh, yes, that’s all very well to say.  There are plenty of men, no doubt, who are shocked beyond anything at the idea of hanging a woman; but those same men will think nothing of going straight home and making life for some other woman so absolutely miserable that she’d think hanging would be a lucky escape from something worse.”

“Harriet!” exclaimed Grandpa in a shocked voice.

“Well, I mean it!” declared Aunt Hattie emphatically.  “Look at poor Madge here, and that wretch of a husband of hers!”

And just here is where the funny thing happened.  Mother bristled up—­Mother—­and even more than Aunt Hattie had.  She turned red and then white, and her eyes blazed.

“That will do, Hattie, please, in my presence,” she said, very cold, like ice.  “Dr. Anderson is not a wretch at all.  He is an honorable, scholarly gentleman.  Without doubt he meant to be kind and considerate.  He simply did not understand me.  We weren’t suited to each other.  That’s all.”

And she got up and swept out of the room.