“But, Father, I can’t” I choked again; and I guess there was something in my face this time that made even him see.  For again he just stared for a minute, and then said: 

“Mary, what in the world does this mean?  Why can’t you go back?  Have you been—­expelled?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Then you mean you won’t go back.”

“I mean I can’t—­on account of Mother.”

I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t had to.  I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew from the very first that I’d have to tell him before I got through.  I could see it in his face.  And so, now, with his eyes blazing as he jumped almost out of his chair and exclaimed, “Your mother!” I let it out and got it over as soon as possible.

“I mean, on account of Mother—­that not for you, or Aunt Jane, or anybody will I go back to that school and associate with folks that won’t associate with me—­on account of Mother.”

And then I told it—­all about the girls, Stella Mayhew, Carrie, and how they acted, and what they said about my being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because I was a Mary and a Marie, and the ice-cream, and the parties they had to give up if they went with me.  And I know I was crying so I could hardly speak before I finished; and Father was on his feet tramping up and down the room muttering something under his breath, and looking—­oh, I can’t begin to tell how he looked.  But it was awful.

“And so that’s why I wish,” I finished chokingly, “that it would hurry up and be a year, so Mother could get married.”

“Married!” Like a flash he turned and stopped short, staring at me.

“Why, yes,” I explained; “for if she did get married, she wouldn’t be divorced any longer, would she?”

But he wouldn’t answer.  With a queer little noise in his throat he turned again and began to walk up and down, up and down, until I thought for a minute he’d forgotten I was there.  But he hadn’t.  For after a while he stopped again right in front of me.

“So your mother is thinking of getting married,” he said in a voice so queer it sounded as if it had come from away off somewhere.

But I shook my head and said no, of course; and that I was very sure she wouldn’t till her year was up, and even then I didn’t know which she’d take, so I couldn’t tell for sure anything about it.  But I hoped she’d take one of them, so she wouldn’t be divorced any longer.

“But you don’t know which she’ll take,” grunted Father again.  He turned then, and began to walk up and down again, with his hands in his pockets; and I didn’t know whether to go away or to stay, and I suppose I’d have been there now if Aunt Jane hadn’t suddenly appeared in the library doorway.

“Charles, if Mary is going to school at all to-day it is high time she was starting,” she said.  But Father didn’t seem to hear.  He was still tramping up and down the room, his hands in his pockets.