Father didn’t say anything either, but he acted queer.  Aunt Jane tried to tell him something about the missionary meeting and the heathen, and a great famine that was raging.  At first he didn’t say anything; then he said, oh, yes, to be sure, how very interesting, and he was glad, very glad.  And Aunt Jane was so disgusted, and accused him of being even more absent-minded than usual, which was entirely unnecessary, she said.

But even that didn’t move Father a mite.  He just said, yes, yes, very likely; and went on scowling to himself and stirring his coffee after he’d drank it all up—­I mean, stirring where it had been in the cup.

I didn’t know but after supper he’d speak to me and ask me to come to the library.  I hoped he would.  There were lots more things I’d like to have said to him.  But he didn’t.  He never said a word.  He just kept scowling, and got up from the table and went off by himself.  But he didn’t go out to the observatory, as he most generally does.  He went into the library and shut the door.

He was there when the telephone message came at eight o’clock.  And what do you think?  He’d forgotten he was going to speak before the College Astronomy Club that evening!  Forgotten his old stars for once.  I don’t know why.  I did think, for a minute, ’twas ’cause of me—­what I’d told him.  But I knew, of course, right away that it couldn’t be that.  He’d never forget his stars for me!  Probably he was just reading up about some other stars, or had forgotten how late it was, or something. (Father’s always forgetting things.) But, anyway, when Aunt Jane called him he got his hat and hurried off without so much as one word to me, who was standing near, or to Aunt Jane, who was following him all through the hall, and telling him in her most I’m-amazed-at-you voice how shockingly absent-minded he was getting to be.

* * * * *

One week later.

Father’s been awfully queer this whole week through.  I can’t make him out at all.  Sometimes I think he’s glad I told him all those things in the parlor that day I dressed up in Marie’s things, and sometimes I think he’s sorry and wished I hadn’t.

The very next morning he came down to breakfast with such a funny look on his face.  He said good-morning to me three times, and all through breakfast he kept looking over at me with a kind of scowl that was not cross at all—­just puzzled.

After breakfast he didn’t go out to the observatory, not even into the library.  He fidgeted around the dining-room till Aunt Jane went out into the kitchen to give her orders to Susie; then he burst out, all of a sudden: 

“Well, Mary, what shall we do to-day?” Just like that he said it, as if we’d been doing things together every day of our lives.

“D-do?” I asked; and I know I showed how surprised I was by the way I stammered and flushed up.